Is Mitt Romney a classically charismatic leader?

Fatally, I asked myself this question over vacation last week....thus here we are,back ruminating about power and charisma...again.
:)
On the face of it Romney has few charismatic attributes.
He is at best an indifferent speaker,unctuous and insincere, prone to mind-numbing "power point" presentations.
On the stump, Mitt is no Pitchfork Ben Tillman.
His pattern runs to droning and grinning, droning and grinning...
Moreover the reform ethos he claims as his own has a fairly low key leadership tradition here in the Bay State.
As I've said before, Romney's "reform agenda" is naught but a windy rhetorical exercise designed to cloak a fairly unoriginal brand of corporate state politics.
In an rhetorical sense, Romney the leader offers less than any of his three GOP predecessors.
All charismatic political figures offer a kind of "leadership myth"....with Reagan it was his survival of an assassination attempt, with the current President it is a sort of self-selected cowboy fighter jock hybrid....or at least that is what is on offer this week.
Even John Kerry offers us a narrative composed of his war-wounds and principled opposition to the Viet Nam War...something for everyone it seems.
What does Romney offer by way of a leadership myth?
His stalwart battle to reduce price gouging at the souvenir shops during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics....
Paltry stuff by way of heroism.
Romney is a bit of a demagogue though...he is certainly exploiting the gay marriage thing for the maximum emotional advantage.
However he is doing it in a passive-aggressive legalistic fashion....there is little fiery zeal in his whining demands that the legislature permit him to personally lobby the SJC.
That could change though, as we move along to the fall campaign there will be ample opportunities for bombastic rhetoric from the Governor and his hand selected lower level candidates.
"Saving" the state for "traditional marriage" is a pretty potent leadership myth and a juicier issue than mere reform.
However the issue doesn't create charisma, it's charisma that makes the issue resonate.
Here Romney falls short.
I think Romney would like to govern via charisma, but his only hope after fourteen months in office is to simply buy that style of leadership wholesale in the fashion of his patron George Bush Jr.
This commodification of charismatic leadership I call pseudo-charisma...something he will need when it comes time spew and rant in the snows of New Hampshire.
Just remember Mitt, pseudo charisma costs money, just ask Karl Rove.

Otherwise despite an impressive package Romney just doesn't have the real stuff.
However, the matter requires observation...