|
|
 |
OR A BEER-DRINKING BUDDY? |
Has it come to this? America likes the guy with the most TV charm?
"We're not hiring someone to be Charmer-in-Chief."
...Chuck McFadden
By
CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
Back when the 17-inch black-and-white screen was the commander
of the living room and Walter Cronkite had dark hair, I had occasion
to watch a teleplay about two political candidates.
One
was a good ol' boy--flag-waving, scattering platitudes, talking
about lessons he learned in conversations with his mother at
the kitchen table.
The other candidate was an acidic, intellectual, idealistic and
uncharming man who told things as they were and seemed to scorn
voters for being so unflaggingly dumb. The play centered around
the conversations the two candidates had prior to, and during,
a televised debate.
The script was terrific. It gave the good ol' boy candidate some nuances and sincerity. He wasn't a caricature. He thought, and felt, and cared, within his limitations. The other candidate--the intellectual--was a human being, too, with all his high-domed thinking. He was vastly more qualified than the good ol' boy. He really wanted to help people, but had little empathy for them as individuals, with all their aggravating traits.
Guess who won the fictional debate and the election?
Right. The good ol' boy.
I got to thinking about that marvelous piece of television the other day when I was watching one of the networks' right-after-the-debate chats with a sort of focus group of undecided voters.
Some of the interviewees--enough to make it a trend, I thought--said they were attracted to George W. Bush because he was more charming than Al Gore. He had a crinkly smile. He was down home. Al Gore was not down home. Al Gore was a smarty-pants. One man said he'd rather have a beer with the Texas governor than with the vice president.
Hello? The presidential election is not about which candidate you'd like to have a beer with, or who Saddam Hussein would rather have a beer with.
Charm doesn't really count for much in an international struggle for power where the stakes are millions of lives in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and Asia.
It
doesn't count for much when we're deciding who will be in charge
of the country as the best jobs evolve to demand more education--and
some of us are left behind because we can't adapt, or don't have
a chance to adapt, and the jobs don't lend themselves to on-the-job
training because they're too complicated.
|
|
 |
It doesn't count for much when we're deciding which candidate is going to have the best shot at giving potential Beethovens and Pasteurs in Watts and Spanish Harlem a chance to blossom or be lost to us forever.
How we address those issues, or whether we address them at all, will hinge on what voters decide on Nov. 7. Those kinds of things are the business of a president, not being charming with talk show hosts. The presidency is not a television show.
Now, you can make the argument that personal charm is important, because a president has to do some one-on-one with Congressional leaders to get what he wants. The president also finds himself having to inveigle foreign leaders into following a particular course of action. And, sometimes, a president has to go on television to convince the country of one thing or another.
But let's draw a fine and necessary distinction here: Force of personality and the ability to marshal arguments and put them across convincingly through the use of language is one thing. Being charming and a nice guy on television is quite another.
Some would argue that the interviewees were really judging the quality of thinking of the candidates, and getting a gut, instinctive feeling about which man had the fortitude, ability to think on his feet and quickness of mind to make a good president. Except they weren't doing that. They were deciding which candidate was the most fun-loving.
George W. is not a dummy, despite what the Democrats hint at about him. He has some legitimate claim to an ability to bring Democrats and Republicans together to work on common problems. He has embraced the notion of diverting some money into private retirement accounts rather than requiring that it all go into Social Security, and that's a concept that is endorsed by some high-powered thinkers, opposed by others. He's against abortion rights, based on his conscience. By many accounts, he's been a reasonably good governor of a major state, although you'd probably get lots of arguments about that, too.
And that's what W. ought to be judged on, not whether you'd like to have a beer with him, because, guess what?, you're not going to have a beer with him if he's elected president.
Al Gore has the better resume. (W's father had the better resume in 1988, remember) Gore has a much better command of the issues. He's been vice president and a key member of an administration that has presided over a booming economy while wrestling (intelligently, for the most part) with the challenge of keeping the world at peace. His position on most issues is more in line with what most people believe than is his opponent's position. He knows more.
But on television, he can come across as condescending, maybe even arrogant. He has a regrettable tendency to talk down to people.
Here's the question we ought to be asking ourselves: So what?
We're not hiring someone to be Charmer-in-Chief. We're supposed to be hiring someone with brains, experience, know-how and coolness under pressure, qualities that don't always show up on television. Charm is an asset to a president, and a lot of them had it in spades. Look at Ronald Reagan, FDR, John Kennedy. But charm was not their single defining trait. They were in the oval office for other reasons.
In sum, voters who make up their minds on the basis of who's the most likeable candidate on television are shortchanging Al Gore and they're shortchanging W. as well. Both have a right to be judged on substance.
Mostly,
however, the feel-good voters are shortchanging themselves. By
limiting their political judgement to seeing a candidate on television,
deciding they like him or her on the basis of the televised persona
and voting accordingly - never mind anything else - they are
opening themselves to eventual surprise and disappointment. I
know. Some of the most charming people I've ever met have later--shockingly--disagreed
with me.
If we make our political decisions using the same criteria we
use to judge which television actors we like to watch, we're
in trouble. It's not the same thing. Repeat. It's not the same
thing.
© 2000 by Charles M. McFadden. The cartoon images are from
the IMSI Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East,
San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
Chuck
McFadden used to cover politics for The Associated Press.
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |