If Politics Is a Circus, Media Put Up the Tent : Choreographed National Conventions Are Both Statecraft and Stagecraft

Every four years we are told that the two national political conventions have lost their importance in the nominating process, that the two parties merely want to look good on television and that in order to look good they choreograph every detail for the cameras. Behind these complaints is a feeling that the whole ritual has become pointless. A political convention seems to be the purest example yet of the “pseudo-event,” an excuse to gain the attention of the news media. Annoyed at being used this way, network executives have threatened to abandon the 1992 conventions completely. Ratings are worse than ever, they say, and the exercise has lost its meaning.

But has it? What is meaningless about the attempt to look good on television? Is this not, after all, a political skill of great importance? To call the conventions pointless assumes that the crafting of perceptions is an empty exercise--but we know from recent history that this is not so. A team of advisers that is unable to choreograph a summit meeting is not qualified for the White House, for it will surely communicate to the world an image of incompetence. A President who cannot command the national spotlight when the networks offer it will accomplish little in domestic policy, for the ability to speak directly to voters is his primary advantage over Congress. Far from a pointless publicity stunt, a convention is a struggle to control the tools of the modern presidency --not only the cameras themselves but also the story coming out of the event.

In Atlanta last month Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis wanted the story to be “Democrats unite around Dukakis,” while the news media, as always, wanted to see conflict and breakdown. This kind of struggle will continue if Dukakis is elected. He would attempt to present himself as a man in charge of the country, while the White House press would look for discord among his advisers or a waning of his authority with Congress and the people.

In New Orleans this week Vice President George Bush wants the story to be “Bush emerges fully from Reagan’s shadow,” while the news media, as always, wanted to see him falter if not fail. Should he win in November, the tension would remain as Bush would try to present himself as a forceful leader against the tendency of the press to magnify his every mistake.

These running battles to control the President’s image are the very stuff of American politics. Perhaps they should not be. Perhaps the excessive attention paid to the President distorts the balance of power and gives the Chief Executive an unfair edge over Congress. Perhaps the intense scrutiny of his every move makes it difficult for the President to take the long view of problems. Maybe he should be encouraged to concentrate on the issues confronting the nation rather than on his image in the media or his popularity month to month. It is possible, indeed, to imagine an entirely different relationship between the White House and the news media in which the need to control every detail of the President’s public persona is not as great because the will to see him as the embodiment of the American character is not as strong. But for now the presidency is one long media event--in part because the news media want it that way.

They are the ones who conduct the presidential “body watch,” in which the executive is trailed by the cameras wherever he goes in public. They are ones who show up by the thousands at the summit meetings, dwarfing by their presence all participants in the event. They are the ones who converge on Iowa and New Hampshire every four years, creating a circusout of the campaigns in those tiny states. And they are the ones who invaded Atlanta and New Orleans this summer in numbers well over 10,000, only to report that the convention was “staged,” “choreographed” and “carefully managed.”

There is something disingenuous about arriving on the scene in packs, only to tell your audience that the scene has been completely orchestrated for you and your colleagues. What’s missing is any admission of how things got that way and any willingness about how to change them. The networks may decide to abandon the conventions in 1992. But if they do it willbe a financial decision, a way to improve ratings during July and August. The complaint that the conventions have lost their meaning makes no sense, for if the conventions are meaningless so is the entire campaign and so is most of presidential politics. In the age of the media blitz, statecraft and stagecraft are indistinguishable. The Democratic and Republican conventions have merely acknowledged that fact.

The problem with the conventions, then, is not that they are purposeless but that they express all too well the degraded purpose of presidential politics: to hold the stage and to look good in doing it. If the members of the news media regret their role in bringing about these conditions, they should say so rather than repeat every four years their hollow complaints about a choreographed convention.