The Wizard of Mar-a-Lago: The Social Psychology of Performed Political Strength
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| The Wizard of Oz (1939) [Image: Flickr] |
What makes a political leader look powerful? Is strength something a leader possesses, or something a society collectively agrees to see? In a recent interview with journalist Nicolle Wallace, historian and Professor Timothy Snyder offered a striking interpretation of Donald Trump's political persona: "He lives entirely by the strength that is conferred upon him by people who believe the story," Dr. Snyder told Wallace. "It's like the end of the Wizard of Oz. In a moment you realise — wait a minute, there actually isn't anything there."
Taken psychologically, this argument is less about Trump's private personality than about a fundamental feature of social power: power is partly relational. A leader may occupy a formally powerful position, but influence depends on how other people interpret, recognise and respond to that position. Research on legitimacy shows that authority cannot rely indefinitely on the possession of power alone — people are more likely to accept authority when they perceive it as appropriate, justified and legitimate (Tyler, 2006).
"It's only based on what other people see." — Professor Timothy Snyder
Strength is partly a social perception
Social psychology has long challenged the idea that leadership is simply a collection of qualities contained inside an individual. Social identity approaches emphasise the relationship between leaders and followers: leaders become influential partly when followers perceive them as embodying the identity of the group they represent. A major meta-analysis involving 128 samples and more than 32,000 participants found a meaningful relationship between perceived leader prototypicality and leadership outcomes (Steffens et al., 2021). People do not respond only to who a leader is. They respond to what that leader appears to represent.
This creates an important communication dimension. Political strength is continually performed through language, images, ceremonies, conflict, repetition and media coverage. A leader who consistently communicates certainty can become associated with certainty. A leader repeatedly portrayed as dominant can become associated with dominance. Over time, perception can become self-reinforcing: people interpret events through an established image, while the established image influences how subsequent events are interpreted.
The follower is part of the mechanism
This is where Snyder's observation becomes particularly interesting from a social-communication perspective. The audience is not merely receiving political communication — it is participating in its construction. Research on charismatic leadership has repeatedly emphasised the follower's role: charisma is not simply an objective property of the leader but a relationship in which followers attribute exceptional qualities to someone (Davies, 1954; Greer, 2005). That helps explain why political narratives can become psychologically powerful even when they contain contradictions. A leader does not need to demonstrate strength continuously — the surrounding communication environment can preserve the perception by selecting, repeating and interpreting information in ways that maintain the established narrative.
Why the image can become fragile
Snyder's "Wizard of Oz" analogy points toward a broader psychological principle. When an identity depends heavily on external recognition, threats to that recognition can become disproportionately important. The issue is not simply whether a leader experiences a setback — it is whether followers interpret that setback as evidence that the previously accepted identity was wrong. A politically powerful person can survive an unpopular decision or a public failure if supporters reinterpret the event without abandoning the underlying identity. Conversely, an apparently minor event can become politically consequential if it is interpreted as proof that the leader is no longer competent, dominant or representative of the group.
Research on dominant political leaders provides another piece of the puzzle. People can infer dominance from appearance, behaviour and political positioning, and preferences for dominant leaders can increase in contexts perceived as involving intergroup conflict (Petersen & Laustsen, 2020). The attraction to "strength", therefore, is not necessarily irrational — under conditions of perceived conflict or uncertainty, dominance communicates a psychological signal of protection and capacity for action.
The deeper lesson is about us
The most uncomfortable implication of Professor Snyder's argument is that political mythology does not exist solely because politicians create it — it exists because audiences participate in it. We collectively decide which behaviours signify strength, which failures can be excused, which contradictions matter and which stories deserve repetition. That makes political media literacy more than fact-checking. It requires asking: What identity is being constructed here? Who benefits from that construction? What behaviours are being interpreted as evidence of strength? And what would have to happen for the story to change?
The Wizard of Oz metaphor ultimately points beyond any single leader. Political power has always involved a relationship between the person exercising authority and the people who recognise that authority. The machinery may be institutional, psychological or communicative, but the principle is remarkably simple: perceived power can become real power when enough people behave as though it is real. And when the perception changes, the political reality can change with it.
Three things worth keeping
1. Political strength is relational. Leadership does not operate independently of followers. Perceptions of competence, legitimacy, identity and dominance all contribute to whether authority is accepted.
2. Political communication creates social reality. Repeated narratives shape how audiences interpret leaders and events. Communication is therefore not merely descriptive — it participates in constructing the identities through which political behaviour is understood.
3. The audience is part of the story. The psychological power of a political image depends partly on collective recognition. When enough people stop treating an image as credible, the social conditions supporting that image can begin to weaken.
Perhaps the most important question is therefore not whether a political leader is genuinely strong. It is why so many people have come to perceive that leader as strong in the first place.
📚 Key references
Davies, J. C. (1954). Charisma in the 1952 campaign. American Political Science Review, 48(4), 1083–1102. https://doi.org/10.2307/1951012
Greer, M. (2005). Charisma doesn't guarantee leadership success. Monitor on Psychology, 36(1). APA
Petersen, M. B., & Laustsen, L. (2020). Dominant leaders and the political psychology of followership. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33, 136–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.005
Steffens, N. K., Munt, K. A., Van Knippenberg, D., Platow, M. J., & Haslam, S. A. (2021). Advancing the social identity theory of leadership: A meta-analytic review of leader group prototypicality. Organizational Psychology Review, 11(1), 35–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386620962569
Steffens, N. K., Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Platow, M. J., Fransen, K., Yang, J., Ryan, M. K., Jetten, J., Peters, K., & Boen, F. (2014). Leadership as social identity management: Introducing the Identity Leadership Inventory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(5), 1001–1024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.05.002
Tyler, T. R. (2006). Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 375–400. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190038
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