Statecraft and Stagecraft

Robert Schmuhl

Description

In this second edition of Statecraft and Stagecraft Robert Schmuhl brings up to date his provocative exploration of the involvement of the media in our public life by including a new chapter on the Persian Gulf War.

Sujets

• Elections
• Campaigns
• Political Process
• American Government
• Persian Gulf War
• Political Science
• Theater
• América
• Theatre
• Politics Magazine
• Federal government of the United States
• Gulf War
• National
• America
• Ronald Reagan

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 avril 1992
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268160692
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Statecraft and Stagecraft
Statecraft
and
Stagecraft
American Political Life in the Age of Personality

SECOND EDITION
Robert Schmuhl
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright 1992 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schmuhl, Robert. Statecraft and Stagecraft: American political life in the age of personality / Robert Schmuhl. -2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-268-01744-1 (pbk.) 1. Mass media-Political aspects-United States. 2. United States-Politics and government-1981-1989. 3. United States-Politics and government-1989- . I. Title P95.82.U6S35 1992 302.23 0973-dc20
91-44655 CIP
ISBN 9780268160692
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
FOR JUDY
Contents
Foreword to the 2016 Printing
Preface
1 Smokeless Politics
2 Image-Making and Anti-Image Journalism
3 The Bully Pulpit at Center Stage
4 The Momentary Majority
5 Cyclops or Big Bird?
6 Temptations of Technology
Postscript: The Theater of War, The War as Theater, and Other Matters
Notes
Acknowledgments and Annotations
Foreword to the 2016 Printing
A quarter century ago, the Age of Personality -a phrase in this book s subtitle-was the relatively youthful progeny of the marriage between that time s statecraft and stagecraft. In 2016, Donald J. Trump discombobulated the Republican Party and American politics by epitomizing the dominance of the personality as presented and projected by the media. His celebrity and charisma-as well as his ability to command television airwaves and different forms of social media-carried much greater weight than multipoint policy proposals, long-term party allegiance, or a definite political ideology, as he competed for the presidency. His appeal proved to be primarily visceral and emotional rather than intellectual.
Just as Trump s emergence symbolized the rise of forces-populist anger, nationalistic fervor, anti-establishment or anti-elite bias, and all the rest-that he came to embody, so, too, Trump was an exemplar of a public figure who could take advantage of the various instruments of stagecraft to become a political player with considerable clout. A prior career as a star on a reality television show, coupled with his own business success in real estate, had made him a household name before he announced his candidacy-to nearly universal derision-on June 16, 2015.
As his campaign gained more of a following, some commentators and political experts suggested comparisons between Trump and Ronald Reagan, who receives considerable attention in the pages that follow. Superficial parallels between the two do exist. As both embarked on careers in politics, they understood how important the media had become in American civic life. Reagan, however, had spent several decades in Hollywood, working from scripts for movies and television programs, before he decided to run for governor of California in 1966 and again in 1970. What he said to the public was largely prepared in advance (scripted, if you will), and he often wrote his own statements before delivering them.
Trump, by contrast, is a product of reality television, with its emphasis on the vivid personality of the main character and on dialogue that is overwhelmingly improvisational. It s situational, extemporaneous communication that matters rather than deliberately planned, even crafted, expressions such as those Reagan delivered. Moreover, eight years as governor of a large, diverse state provide experiences for the daily hurly-burly a president might-and does-confront. To paraphrase a former vice-presidential candidate, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.
The magnification of the personality has increased in power and consequence since Statecraft and Stagecraft first appeared. Moreover, the proliferation of media platforms-or ways of acquiring political information-has radically changed the relationship between a citizen and American civic life. Millennials and many Baby Boomers now take for granted an endless array of messages, abbreviated or extended, on their laptops, tablets, or smartphones as well as more traditional means of communication, like television, radio, or print. From the 1990s to today, the media landscape has gone from a field with a sturdy stand of several, deeply-rooted trees-three major commercial television networks, a few key newspapers and magazines, and such-to a dense forest, as far as the eye can see, of arboreal specimens that vary in type, scope, audience, presentation, and viewpoint in the delivery of political content.
A short timeline helps show how the media landscape has developed over the past twenty-five years, altering substantially the ways in which Americans receive information about politics and government:
1996
Fox News Channel and MSNBC take to the airwaves
1997
The Drudge Report website begins, with a conservative slant
1998
Google is founded
2004
Facebook starts (and grows to 156.5 million users in the U.S. by 2015)
2005
The Huffington Post launches, with a liberal slant (and in 2011 AOL bought this website for 315 million)
2005
YouTube is created
2006
Twitter goes online
2010
Instagram joins other social media platforms
2011
Snapchat enters the multi-media messaging world
2015
Periscope permits live-streaming video with smartphones
Each of these technological inventions or innovations expanded the possibility for the presentation of political communication. Many more sources, though, challenged traditional outlets for audience and attention. It s important to remember: A person has a finite amount of time to spend with the media on any given day. If new forms of media and their messages appeal to someone, sources that came into existence earlier will lose some of their followers. For example, in 1980, the year CNN began its all-news format, 52 million people (out of nearly 227 million Americans) watched the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC. That meant 75 percent of television sets were turned to network news each night. By contrast, Pew Research Center s State of the News Media 2015 reported that total viewership for ABC, CBS, and NBC has now dropped to about 24 million-less than half the earlier audience-at a time when the population exceeds 320 million people.
A useful way to view the contemporary communications galaxy is the metaphorical description formulated by Tom Brokaw, the long-time anchor and correspondent for NBC News. In the book No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle (2008) by Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman, Brokaw explains: I think we are in the middle of another Big Bang. We ve created this universe in which all these planets are suddenly out there colliding with each other. We are trying to determine which ones will support life, which ones will drift too close to the sun and burn up, which ones will meld with another. And the effect of it all is bewildering, both to those of us in this end of the spectrum and those who are on the receiving end. It s a big dilemma and we haven t given enough thought to the consequences.
This contemporary Big Bang has turned the communications world upside down in a continuing series of inversions from how it used to be:
From relatively few sources (and a common body of shared information), there are now a multitude of different sources, with smaller audiences on what Brokaw called the receiving end. The mass (of the phrase mass media ) contracts as outlets proliferate-and even terms change to become more precise. Broadcasting downsizes to narrowcasting -and shrinks further to what s now known as slivercasting.
From what used to be relatively expensive messages, there are now free outlets for the same messages. Newspapers and magazines that previously required payment for their content now (in most cases) provide it without charge over the Internet. When someone learns of an article of interest, the current impulse is to check it out on the Web rather than buy a copy of the publication in which it appears.
From traditional journalistic sources, there are now hybrid forms. We see this in the combining of news with entertainment. The so-called fake news of Comedy Central s The Daily Show or the satiric treatments on display in HBO s Last Week Tonight or regularly in The Onion are cases in point. In this realm, we also find the convergence of news and opinion in a single source-as, of course, happens with radio talk shows, on Websites like The Drudge Report or The Huffington Post, and throughout the ever-expanding social-media complex of instant messaging.
From professional journalists providing news, analysis, and commentary, there are now citizen-journalists -armies of amateurs weighing in by using new technologies with their reports, images, and perspectives. Several of the social-networking sites provide on the scene accounts from firsthand observers, and these posts now often find their way to outlets with larger audiences.
All of these circumstances, from few to many, from expensive to free, from news to entertainment mixed with opinion, and from professional to amateur, create a much different media world from the one that existed just a quarter century ago. With political communication in particular, the ascendancy of opinion demands focused scrutiny