[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Of Campaigns and Breakfast Cereals

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Of Campaigns and Breakfast Cereals

August 30, 2004
 By BOB HERBERT 



 

"Most national issues today are so complicated, so
difficult to understand and have opinions on, that they
either intimidate or, more often, bore the average voter." 

So wrote Harry Treleaven, an advertising man who took a
leave of absence in the mid-1960's to work on the Texas
Congressional campaign of 42-year-old George Herbert Walker
Bush. Mr. Treleaven was not upset by the fact that voters
were turned off by the complexity of important political
issues. After all, he was in advertising. The goal was to
sell product, not explore issues. 

Mr. Treleaven became a key figure in Richard Nixon's 1968
campaign. Joe McGinniss, in his best-selling book about
that campaign, "The Selling of the President,'' said of Mr.
Treleaven: 

"There was no issue when it came to selling Ford
automobiles; there were only the product, the competition
and the advertising. He saw no reason why politics should
be any different." 

Mr. Treleaven died in 1998, but the path-breaking cynicism
of his type of politics hangs like a shroud over this
year's presidential campaign. 

You want complicated issues? Start with Iraq - a war with
no clearly defined goal, not even the remotest timetable
for victory, and no exit strategy whatsoever. The ad men
(and women) will reduce this monumental tragedy to crisp,
poll-tested campaign sound bites. 

Or consider the economy. We're in a new world of work in
which good jobs at good pay with good benefits are ever
more hard to find. Despite the administration's insistence
that the economy is strong and getting stronger, there is
no light at the end of this dismal tunnel. Job growth is
anemic. The middle class is being relentlessly squeezed.
And the Census Bureau tells us that in 2003, for the third
year in a row, the number of Americans who are poor
increased. 

As David Leonhardt wrote in The Times on Friday, "The
economy's troubles, which first affected high-income
families even more than the middle class and poor, have
recently hurt families at the bottom and in the middle
significantly more than those at the top." 

These are issues that should be ruthlessly explored, but
the politicians, their handlers and much of the media have
taken their cues from Harry Treleaven. You don't want to
bore the readers or viewers or voters with anything too
complicated. A well-rehearsed comment or two will suffice,
followed by the jokes on Leno and Letterman, and then it's
on to the "real world" of Paris and Kobe and whatever. 

This week's Republican convention in New York is a rigidly
scripted theatrical event that will garner a grand total of
three hours of live coverage on network television - a
reprise of the Democrats' rigidly scripted extravaganza in
Boston last month. Anyone who drifts off message will be
viewed as a nut. 

So we won't get anything but pap about Iraq. We'll be told
about the miraculous economic healing powers of the Bush
tax cuts. We'll be told that the era of George Bush II has
been a rousing success for America. 

Serious voters who would like to hear a discussion (from
the leaders of both parties) about why we are in Iraq and
when and how we might get out of there will be
disappointed. So will voters interested in exploring ideas
about the leadership role of the United States in the
post-9/11 world, which is at least as important as the role
thrust upon the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II. 

More scary stories are emerging about global warming, and
our dependence on foreign oil is undermining our security
like never before. But these topics, too, are complex, and
therefore, according to the advertising folks and media
gurus, too difficult and boring for general consumption. 

In other words, we're a nation of nitwits, and a
presidential campaign at a critical moment in world history
will be spoon-fed to us like an ad for Wheaties. 

Raymond Price, a speechwriter for Nixon in the 1968
campaign, was as contemptuous of substance in politics as
Treleaven. "It's not what's there that counts," he wrote,
"it's what's projected." In Price's view, "Voters are
basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort
to understand what we're talking about." 

Voters could revolt against this kind of humiliating
treatment. But that would happen only if the Treleavens and
Prices of the world were wrong. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/opinion/30herbert.html?ex=1094904266&ei=1&en=68f30ea4a315c7dc


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