It’s still a surprise to encounter a president who mostly shuns the potent rhetorical power of the office in favor of throwing little grenades of text out to small screens.
Since the early 1950s presidents have always made effective use of television. As my colleague David Blake points out in his new book, Liking Ike (Oxford, 2016), even the rhetorically awkward Dwight Eisenhower warmed to the demands of ‘putting on a good show’ for Americans anxious to be reassured. With its obvious interest in pictures, television is anything but a natural home for political discussion. But the presidency obviously has the advantage of singularity. This is what the “bully pulpit means in the 21st Century. Video in various forms sustains our need to understand that one person is mostly in charge. We use this reductionist idea to make the presidency a vessel into which we place a lot of hope for our well-being and security.
So it’s all the more surprising to encounter a president who still shuns the magisterial power of the Presidency in favor of throwing out little grenades of text to small screens late at night. To be sure, our Donald Trump remains true to his reality television roots. He has mastered a kind of bumper sticker rhetoric, even though these missives betray him as a shallow and surprisingly mean-spirited leader. In more normal times presidents usually try to offer to the nation the best versions of themselves.
The screen of a smartphone is too small for this task, especially since presidents have an IMax of possibilities they can use to press their views to the American public: availabilities for journalists, junkets, and visits to Americans to offer support and reassurance. By tradition the best and most transcendent causes are at his disposal. The job requires the celebration of all things quintessentially American.
We usually come to terms with the President largely as a dominating presence in video set pieces: press conferences, the State of the Union Address and carefully choreographed interviews, especially when they are carried by one of the big three cable news channels. It’s a puzzle no one has clued him in on how to master these venues. He survived the State of the Union Speech. Many thought it was one of his best moments. Surely he must have some additional American values to celebrate, features of the national character that he could endorse. They would at least make a play at reframing himself as a leader with a heart. Events like a walk-through at a veteran’s hospital or simply throwing out a baseball as the National’s start of their season could humanize him. Moments like these could only leave his doubters silent. Even Richard Nixon could be charming when reminiscing about his four brothers, or the hard-scrabble life of his Quaker family in small-town Whittier California.
What kind of president reverts to a divisive campaign speech in the first three months of office?
To understand how much an outlier Trump is one need only look at his strange “campaign” appearance in Harrisburg Pennsylvania on April 27. The Leader of the Free World looked small and defiant in that speech, which was mostly an attack on all sorts of Americans: the press, the Senate Majority Leader, migrants and minorities. He found time to criticize the architecture and new location of the “fake news” The New York Times. There were also predictable scuffles outside. And a few hecklers gave him a chance to use his beloved mafia line, throw them “outta here!” As the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson noted, “It was a speech with all the logic, elevation and public purpose of a stink bomb.” Another Republican presidential adviser David Gergen, told CNN it was the most divisive presidential speech he had ever heard.
What kind of president reverts to a divisive campaign speech in the first three months of office? Why is his eye always on the rear view mirror rather than the tortuous road ahead? And why is he still issuing jeremiads against his foes rather than sharing national aspirations? Time will tell. But at least for now, and from a rhetorical perspective, Trump has managed to make the Presidency small and diminished, and too many of us nervous.
Of course we can do politics at a distance through all kinds of dreary media: direct mail, tweets, television advertising, robocalls and other poor substitutes for direct citizen action. But there’s a better option.
In the age of video politics and social media it may come as a surprise that political canvassing survives as a vital way to connect with voters. Though for many it may seem like a stretch to actually show up at someone’s front door and ask for their support, thousands of Americans are comfortable doing it. Canvassing is a proven way to increase a candidate’s chances. One study indicated a 10 percent increase in the likelihood a voter will show up on election day if they have met someone from the campaign.
We have over 500,000 elective offices in the United States. Most are for small districts, featuring local candidates who cannot afford TV buys or big campaign budgets. The solution? Put your supporters, friends and family to work going door to door and asking voters for their support. It’s always been an important feature in American political life. This humble approach is even credited with Barack Obama’s impressive presidential win in 2008. The former Chicago organizer seemed to remember a thing or two about mobilizing neighborhoods. In that year thousands were mobilized for a street by street effort in key states, spreading enthusiasm from one front porch to the next.
When insiders talk about a good “ground game” this is partly what they mean. It’s no wonder that the emerging wisdom in campaign strategizing is to put less money into video ads and more into organizing recruits to knock on the doors of the still undecided.
Social media and face to face canvassing share the common thread of a more interpersonal approach to political persuasion. The canvas in particular is a hopeful exercise in direct citizen to citizen action. By comparison, candidates who phone in a plea for support via robocalls seem positively lazy .
Two recent developments are reminders of the importance of canvassing. One is a new book by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes on the failed 2016 Clinton campaign. Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign lays part of her defeat to the fact that her staff did not follow the Obama playbook of fully committing to get-out-the-vote efforts. Of course neither did the victor’s campaign. But Donald Trump in 2016 was an outlier in so many ways that it is risky to view his path to the White House as a bellwether.
The second development comes from recent reports that some of the parties fighting for dominance in the French elections are trying out American-style canvassing. The tradition is deeply entrenched in Britain, but not across the Channel in France, where talking politics at the front door of a stranger’s home is considered unusual. But it reflects a feature that motivates so much effective canvassing: an urgency at the grassroots to do something to stave off an election disaster: in this case, what some fear could be a Trump-style victory by far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Whatever the outcome of the final vote on May 7, the result is good for democracy in France. More citizens will have engaged in meaningful contact with their neighbors on a vital question worthy of their effort.
Few householders are hostile. And most seem surprised that someone cares enough to show up.
Of course we can do politics at a distance through all kinds of dreary media: direct mail, tweets, television advertising, robocalls and other mechanical means that are poor substitutes for direct citizen action. But all are disembodied, remote and impersonal. Only social media come close to rendering an impression of direct contact with others we know. And even that is partly an illusion: something short of a genuine conversation with a neighbor in real time and space.
A modern canvasser should not expect a cakewalk. Many doorbells will not be answered. And some campaigns send their workers to the wrong houses (a micro-targeting challenge that is never easy). But few householders are hostile. Most seem surprised that someone cares enough to show up. And all seem grateful that the canvasser isn’t launching into a lecture about eternal salvation.
