Free Fire and Ashes by Michael Ignatieff Page A

with Liberal roots going back forty years. It was a delicate line to walk. I was running to lead a party whose culture of intrigue disgusted me, but I was seeking votes from loyalists who wouldn’t vote for me if my disgust were too plain. I needed to convince them—handshake by handshake, answer by answer, smile by smile—that I had what it took, that I was prepared to work for it and that they could trust me.
    Politics is intensely physical: your hands touch, clasp and hold, and your eyes are always reaching for contact. None of this came naturally to me. I had a bad habit of looking down and away when people talked to me. I’d always put my trust in words and let the words do the work, but in politics, the real message is physical, delivered by your eyes and your hands. Whatever you say, your body must communicate the message: you can trust me.
    Now that I was in the fray, I admired the masters of the art even more, and I thought back to a master class I had been given in politics in 2001. I was steering Bill Clinton through a room at the Davos meetings at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. I was amazed at his ability to remember names—and not just names but whole family stories—as he squeezed this hand, leaned in to kiss that cheek, locked his gaze on another’s, and kept moving, baling them in like a combine harvester. When I met President Obama later on, I will never forget the grip on my elbow, the quick mention of a book of mine, a reference to a mutual friend, Samantha Power, and his casual grace, together with the capacity to make you feel, when you were speaking, that you were the only person of interest to him in the room.
    These are ancient arts, the skills that are commended in Baldassare Castiglione’s
Book of the Courtier
, written in the early sixteenth century and based on his experience at the court of the Duke of Mantua. The word he used to describe the key talent in politics was
“sprezzatura.”
It is also without an exact equivalent in English but basically means the gift of making people feel at ease in your company. Castiglione’s advice speaks down the ages:
    I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough anddangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practice in all things a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived or effortless. I am sure that grace springs especially from this … 1
    “Uncontrived and effortless”: the great politicians make contrivance look uncontrived. All of the human skills in politics involve artifice, but the artifice must be concealed with ease and grace. This artificial graciousness can be learned with time and experience, but it cannot be taught. It’s not a technique or a routine. There is no executive leadership course that will give it to you. It is a form of gracefulness in human behaviour that is more akin to athletic ability than technical intelligence. If natural grace isn’t there to begin with, it can’t be acquired or displayed with any conviction. When we call a politician a “natural,” we mean she has this mysterious ability to make a connection with others, to make them feel at ease, to make them feel special. All naturals get better with practice, but unless it comes naturally, it doesn’t look real. What must be real is not so much the smoothness for which politicians are both envied and despised, but real curiosity and interest in people’s stories, in the way they tell them and the meaning they are trying to convey. Of all the qualities that go into
sprezzatura
, I would rate listening, being able to deeply listen to your fellow citizens, as the most underrated skill in politics. For what people want in a politician, what they have a right to demand, is to be listened to. Often, listening is all you can do. Their problems may