When our perception of a candidate is largely determined by the TV format, we the people are forced to pick a ‘bland personality’. Just for the entertainment value.

"TV does not entertain a context. The lens serves not as a window, but as a peephole"

HOME

BACK

ELECTION FATIGUE!

Advertisers and cartoonists were quick to exploit people's  angst with  butterfly ballots,   lawyers and the candidates themselves.
This interactive site is a perfect example!

"With TV came a form of specialism and fragmentation… the supremacy of the blurred outline."
Marshall McLuhan

Even before the Internet alters the process and turns electorates into e-lectorates, even before campaign reform steps in to tame the beast, it is interesting to see what forces have been at work. The mechanism in place, is largely dependent on the discipline, technique and technology that began in the early part of this century: image marketing, opinion polls and television.

The marketing of candidates is often determined by opinion polling, no different from the way focus groups and test markets help commodities break into the market. The photo finish, even without Florida, was predicted. Yet when Al Gore lost his home state, Tennessee, but inched past George Bush in the popular vote, it seemed like a victory of marketers over pollsters, his TV persona over his real, boring self. But towards the end of the campaign, it was Bush who was coming off stronger on TV. So what was causing this flip-flop? It's easy to accuse "the media" for trivializing the political process. It's convenient to blame the candidates’ spin doctors for distorting the issues. The truth may be less conspiratorial. The candidates may have been uninspiring, but the real reason for their ‘bland differentiation was their overuse of TV. The medium was the culprit.

THE LENS AS A PEEPHOLE
Television, given its capacity for an extreme close-up view, never played to either candidate's advantage --at least consistently. When we were able to see them minus the filters --warts and all-- it had a paralyzing effect. Knowing every minutiae of a candidate's past, his medical records, school grades and wardrobe distorted the concept of 'transparency'. Too many opinions, too many ‘facts’, instant analyses, a barrage of half-truths, speculations and myths made picking a candidate almost impossible. Television used to be considered the ‘window of the world’. But the genre has evolved, thanks to forces such as surveillance-type investigative journalism, into something more akin to voyeurism: the lens not as a window, but as a peephole. No wonder subjects became less appealing. We had a surfeit of data, and still found it hard to make a decision.

So political marketers, mobilizing the seductive power of television may have got what they wanted –visibility. But it came at a price they didn't expect: apathy. In 1996, Bob Dole running against Bill Clinton asked voters to beware of TV journalism. "Don't let them make up your mind," he warned. Arguably, they did. Clinton promised the best footage –right up to the infamous impeachment tapes. TV is still king of the hill with twice the penetration as the Internet. Politicians are not willing to abandon its power even though its inherent biases are harder to conceal. The whole question of campaign reform, after all, hinges on the cost of TV airtime. But why is television, the great mover of goods and services, responsible for this blandness? Blame it on two tried and tested TV formats which campaigning employs: talk shows and beauty pageants.

THE TALK SHOW
Even for matters outside strict politics (education, gun control, the environment etc), people who have become highly skeptical of the advertisement or the press release and weary of the news bulletins, gravitate towards the talk show. We like the interrogative style and therefore put up with its intellectual pretense. Yet we are spectators, rather than participants, and are drawn by the entertainment value. Two decades ago Neil Postman warned us that we are "amusing ourselves to death". (How true: fifty one percent of adults in the US get their news from late night comedy shows). These shows provide visual and emotional gratification, but little else.

The campaign trail became one extended TV event. Both Bush and Gore were guests on the same lineup of TV staples such as Oprah Winfrey, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, and Rosie O’Donnell. Their appearance on these shows was no different from any other theatrical event with make-up artists, image consultants, speechwriters and spinmeisters. Take Al Gore, the most made-for-TV candidate at the recent US elections. Every move was scripted, every inch of his face air-brushed. Every campaign managers knows that in shows like this it is the triumph of image over content. Furthermore, the humor format allows the audience to cozy up to a candidate and see him outside of the realm of politics. Yet, it also gives him a way to evade the hard questions. As Leno, criticized for not dealing with the issues replied, his business is to always make his guests look good. No wonder the PR folk go for these slots. The crowning piece of entertainment came two days before the election when both Bush and Gore appeared on "Saturday Night Live" –the equivalent of Spitting Image with a live cast-- that has always lampooned them. So how to vote for these two comedians? The one with the funnier punch line?

THE BEAUTY PAGEANT
In the three-part debates on TV that were the equivalent of a beauty pageant, both Gore and Bush strove for qualities such as compassion, youthfulness, and intellect. They knew, like all candidates since the Nixon-Kennedy debates realized, that people vote for personalities, not issues. As in beauty pageants, the debates were structured into different environments. The first was at a podium, the second, at a table, and the third in a ‘town hall’ meeting, with a real audience.

The standard lectern, like the catwalk, gave a full-frontal view of the contender with very limited interaction between the two (rebuttals were limited to one minute; just enough time for a rehearsed sound bite). The tabletop discussion (the equivalent of getting the beauty queens to appear more relaxed, in evening gowns) allowed a maximum of two minutes for each point. So trying to pick your candidate based on a made-for-TV debate was like trying to judge a female ambassador to the world based on the swimsuit section. It's too stage-managed. What made the pageant more a spectacle than a real debate, was that the two candidates were not allowed to question each other. Marshall McLuhan categorized TV as a ‘cool’ medium, because of its low level of interaction between content and audience. In this case even the content providers were the epitome of 'cool'. Even when the format permitted it, as when the moderator asked Gore what he had meant when he questioned (prior to the debate) George Bush's experience to be president, Gore, slipped into a litany of why he believed he was the right choice!

Indeed beauty-pageant politics is a clever concept. It forces print journalists and Web reporters to unwittingly report on a TV event itself. It makes it impossible for candidates to stick with the issues --they have limited airtime after all. It's even more maddening for the voter who is choosing between two ‘bland personalities. Battling between wanting to be informed, and wanting to be entertained.

THE GUY IN THE DRIVING SEAT
So, the most telling opinion poll turned out to be an unscientific one on the Internet. The automobile Web site called autotrader.com asked visitors to vote for their candidates in terms of models of cars. This isn’t something new in marketing. Ad agencies frequently ask focus groups to anthropomorphize products ("If Brand X was a person what type of person would she be?") to tap into emotional triggers and relationships people make with brands. People might describe an airline as a ballet dancer, or a tube of toothpaste as a sumo wrestler.

The amazing thing about the auto-candidate connection was that more people chose George Bush over Al Gore, after equating Bush to a Porsche (fast, with the times), and Al Gore to a Volvo (safe and dependable).

In real life, especially in televised real life, the choice wasn’t all that easy.