Free A Creed for the Third Millennium by Colleen McCullough

chats
to the nation is how! He'd sit there and look straight into the camera without
blinking those big clear fascinating eyes, pouring his mind and his spirit
across the gap between the White House and Main Street Anywhere so effectively
that everyone who watched him and heard what he said was convinced the man spoke
from his heart to that one listening person alone. He was a strong, indomitable
and utterly sincere man, with the ability to project what he was! And he knew
the ideas and the words that act as keys to unlock emotions.'
    He grimaced, looking as if suddenly he
was repelled to nausea by what he was thinking, then he visibly got himself
under command, and said, 'Have you ever heard any of Hitler's speeches, or seen
him in old film clips haranguing a crowd? Ridiculous! He comes across as a
posturing, screaming, infantile little man. There were plenty of Germans who
used the same tactics Hitler did, appealed to the same frustrated national
feelings, put up the same hapless and innocent scapegoats, but those other
Germans didn't have what Hitler had — the ability to inspire, to bury
good sense and intellect under a landslide of emotion. He was evil personified,
but he had charisma. Or take his arch enemy, Winston Churchill. The bulk of
Churchill's most telling speeches were either pinched straight out of the works
of other people, or paraphrased. Little of what he actually said was original,
and often to us he comes across as unbelievably sentimental, real cornpone hokum
stuff. But the man had the most magnificent way with him, and like Hitler he was
there at the time the people could be reached and influenced by what he said, and how he said it. He inspired! Charisma. Neither Hitler nor Churchill
was sexy or handsome or, I understand, particularly charming. Unless they needed
to be charming, when, I understand, they could charm the birds right out of the
trees. St Francis of Assisi had charisma, and he could literally charm the birds
right out of the trees. Now he had the real McCoy. But so did Hitler, and
Churchill, and Augustus Rome. Okay. Let's move on a bit, take a look at
Iggy-Piggy the pop star and Raoul Delice the playboy. Do they have charisma? No!
They're both sexy, they're both colossally charming, they're both objects of
adulation. Yet when the winds of time blow them away, no one will even remember
their names. They do not have genuine charisma. They don't have what it takes to
lead a nation to its finest hour, or to the nadir of its history. And
Senator David Sims Hillier VII? The computer says
he doesn't have charisma of the kind I'm sure our Judith is looking for. My
chief researcher agreed with the computer. And I agree with both of them. Where
right from the first early pass of the entire sample through the first of the
early programs, Dr Joshua Christian's name kept popping to the top. No matter
what we did, his name was a cork we couldn't keep under. That
simple.'
    Dr Carriol nodded. 'Thank you, Moshe.'
She smiled. 'I know it's a bit of an anticlimax after all this, but you'd better
get on and give us your choice for third place.'
    Dr Chasen came down from where he had
been dwelling, and opened the last file. 'Dominic d'Este. An eighth-generation
American. One-quarter black blood from a full black grandparent. Aged
thirty-six. Married, two children, SCB second child approval number DX-42-6-084,
the older child a girl aged eleven, in school, straight A's, the younger a boy
aged seven, in school, classified extremely bright. He made a perfect ten on the
Carriol scales for marriage and parenthood.' This with an ironic nod towards the
head of the table.
    Dr Carriol acknowledged it, and went back
to studying the handsome face in the photograph between her hands. A
superlatively handsome face. The black blood didn't really show except in the
eyes, which were night dark and of that curious, wonderful liquidity peculiar to
people of black