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| ESSAY: FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT | |
 July 28, 2000 
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RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: It's convention time again. In Philadelphia, Governor George Bush will be nominated; a noisy celebration by party regulars will follow; confetti and balloons will fall from the ceiling. In Los Angeles, Vice President Al Gore will be nominated; a noisy celebration by party regulars will follow; confetti and balloons will fall from the ceiling. Recently as our civic lives our entertainments and manners have grown more rowdy and fiercely spontaneous. Our national politics have become strictly scripted. The convention acceptance speech written by committee blends blandly into another and another we have all heard before. Call it our politics of regularity. American voters flirt with the irregular. In the primaries, Americans flirted, finally only flirted with candidates who were not pre- chosen by party insiders. Now, third-party candidates are admired for their candor and directness. Could it be that "candid" and "direct" are what you're allowed to be when everyone assumes you've no chance to win? Blame it on television. Beware of the camera. Richard Nixon, in that first televised presidential debate, learned the price of not wearing makeup and, worse, sweating on television. Since then, candidates have been defeated for the sin of weeping or not knowing how to spell potato or looking goofy wearing a helmet or showing impatience by looking at a wristwatch after a presidential debate. Blame it on the press. What makes it into the morning paper is the candidate's misstatement or misstep. Or else what makes it into the paper is not what the candidate said, but the fact that several demonstrators at the edge of a crowd caused a disruption. On the campaign bus or plane, a lethargy or cynicism sets in. Reporters get off in Peoria or San Diego-- sometimes not knowing which-- to hear the speech they have heard at several other stops that day. It has occurred to some reporters on the bus that maybe they were the most interesting story. Maybe you could get a book contract by telling about what it is like to be reporter on a campaign bus. Indeed, so interesting have political journalists become to themselves, it has become conventional for them to interview one another. One sees them on television all the time now-- one left-winger versus one right-winger, journalists playing at being stand-ins for the competing candidates they are supposed to report on and stand-ins for the American public they never need to interviews. Blame it on the pollsters. Walt Whitman heard 19th century America singing. In our age of the pollster, Americans get their voices recorded in numbers-- pro, con, undecided. Politicians and the press hire pollsters to let them know how we're going to vote before we actually do. Estimates in Philadelphia and Los Angeles are that 15,000 print and television journalists will converge to cover the two scripted conventions. With such a large media presence it's occurred to not a few people that both cities would make excellent locations for mass demonstrations - the media inside the hall, easily bored, might drift outside. President Clinton, who grew up in the age of television and pollsters, replaced ideological consistency or fire for a cool, centrist management style. Maybe what he supposed was that we are entering an age when the job of President is comparable to a corporate CEO. You and I are to blame. We have come to accept political campaigns where every ghostly utterance must be written by handlers and a candidate must never appear in an unguarded moment. In coming weeks, millions of us will wait, at every stop, crowds will line up in small towns and along big-city streets, hands will reach out toward the candidates. Many ancient societies believed that the touch was a healing touch. Today we need to touch and be touched by our presidential candidates to convince ourselves that they really exist. I'm Richard Rodriguez. |
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