Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party won big in the United Kingdom’s recent election, establishing a clear path — or more precisely, a clearer path — to Brexit Jan. 31. Amid all the questions of winners (the Tories) and losers (the Labour Party, its unpalatable former leader Jeremy Corbyn, and quite possibly the British worker, London as world financial capital, immigrants, globalism, Scotland, the Irish backstop), was the notion that the Conservatives succeeded because of Johnson’s Trumpian charisma, which he damped down for the occasion by corralling his usual hijinks.
Read MoreFresco of dancing Peucetian women from the Tomb of the Dancers in the Corso Cotugno necropolis of Ruvo di Puglia, end of the 5th or mid-4th century B.C. The ancient Greeks believed that charisma was the grace of the gods. But charisma has little grace in the modern age.