In Today’s Politics, a Seasoned Ham Brings Home the Bacon

In a recent television interview, President Reagan was asked, “Did being an actor help you in the presidency?” To which Reagan answered forthrightly: “Yes.”

Some of my friends, dedicated to the proposition that political dialogue ought to be bleached clean of all extraneous glitter, are struck dumb by the President’s answer. The notion that an actor, for God’s sake, has anything to add to the art of politics is unruly clutter in political-science classrooms. But “what ought to be” is a lonely wanderer in the real world populated mostly by “what is.”

Truth engages reality. The affinity of politicians and actors emerges from the same DNA. Both are in thrall to the art of persuasion. The actor performs, trying to move the audience so that they laugh or cry or gasp in astonishment, as the actor chooses, even as the politician performs, trying to infect the audience so that his declarations become their convictions.

President Reagan understood this instinctively, as the American people’s triumphant embrace of his pleadings so readily confirmed. He never rose to his feet without calling on the guile, the skills, the contagion of assurance that inhabits the actor’s craft. The tilt of the head,the musical timbre of tone, the sly self-deprecating wit, the ascending outrage, the glimpse of steel, the comforting glance--these are instruments of persuasion, and the leader who cannot persuade cannot govern.

How often have we borne witness to a speaking performance by an elected official, or someone trying to be one, who buries his face in the text, allowing us to see only his forested head (or a shining pate) as he bloviates endlessly? Or the politician who lurches as he collides awkwardly with the simple English sentence, or the high public panjandrum who drones on as he puts Seconal out of business with his new brand of assured drowsiness? The sad fact is that too many officials are tedious, and in this visual world a viewer regards their public presentations with mounting irritation.

To know the subject is not enough. You must be able to illuminate it.

Before the age of telecommunication, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt understood with clarity the indispensable value of the dramatic narrative, offered with style and grace. No one who aspires to capture the affection and the confidence of the people can attach a casual value to his or her “performance.” Those who trumpet that what really counts is knowng the details of and solution to the issue, and hang how it is conveyed to the nation, are defining an ineffective public official. In any presidential election, 95% of the populace will never see the candidates in person, never hear them make an entire speech. All that the voter knows will come from the TV screen, much of it received in elusive fragments.

What the professional observers misconstrue is the essential element of the human condition. Voters choose Presidents viscerally, not intellectually. They come to what is most notably a romantic conclusion, for their choice flies on gossamer wings. One reaches for a wife or a husband with the same winged search. No room here for the “pros and cons” of investment analysis.

In a crisis the elected leader must appear on a television screen in millions of American homes to cite the problem, uncoil its detail, simplify its density, anoint a reasonable conclusion and do it all with some believable harmony. But (and here is the rub) all of this must be conveyed as an actor entices his audience, to draw from that audience their sympathy as well as their attention. Is that so wrong? Why should dullness be exalted, and that which is appealing be exiled? Why do we make coarse and slack assumptions about voters? They are “audiences” who cast ballots, and as an audience they are drawn to that which is interesting, fascinating. And yes, they can spot phonies swiftly. Mostly they are not too keen on remarks that swarm with loose and foolish observations or fluty soliloquies invested with the whine of a wounded rhino.

It is as Will Durant once wrote about academicians when H. G. Wells came onto the scene: “History became popular, and historians became alarmed. Now it would be necessary for them to write as interestingly as H. G. Wells.”

Ronald Reagan may have redefined the role of high-stationed public officials. It is not enough to know. Now one must present one’s self interestingly.