Momentous Event

Don W. Kleine
[The author, winner of an Avery Hopwood fiction prize last year, teaches English at Cornell University. He has published a study of "personality" politics.]

Ithaca, N.Y.

IT IS hardly surprising that newsmen, themselves instances of the mass culture they help perpetuate, should have complained almost indignantly of how "dull" this campaign has been--as if a dull campaign were somehow a failure of the democratic process. Up till the first debate, the contest was low in entertainment value. Neither man charmed the heart like a Roosevelt, nor elicited anything resembling the tide of smug enthusiasm which swept Ike into office. And, as sheer entertainment, the debates have also proved tame fare. To be sure, the Vice President's solemn arraignment of Truman's profanity provided a moment of sardonic comedy. But otherwise, these historical meetings have been far from the blazing spectacles they might have been (and may some day be) with professional script and actors. Neither candidate unmasked the other as millions gasped and wept; there were no searing retorts, no icy rages; the exchanges did not even bristle much. It is as if the participants had tacitly agreed not to go too far, as if each knew how fearful the consequences of spontaneity might be. The Nixon-Kennedy debates were not, then, just that brisk pick-me-up the doctor ordered for a dull campaign. Theatrically speaking, they were failures. But their failure as theatre is one of the things that, to my view, places them among the truly astonishing and momentous events of our time.

Nixon and Kennedy are two of the most brilliant political personalities to emerge from the war. Within each is an uncannily efficient little engine, driving the man forward past all obstacles. For shrewdness and nerve, one could hardly imagine two opponents better matched: each is the apotheosis of the "new" species of leader. And, yet, despite their fascination with lighting and studio temperatures, these political geniuses impress upon one, from the first debate to the last, the amateurism of their presences. Especially in the first encounter, but also in subsequent sessions, each man is, within the framework of his abundant courage, scared half to death. Certainly neither is that creature whose emergence an age of mass communications had taught one to expect--the abominable showman, the unprincipled entertainer-politician coolly "projecting" a false "image" into the living-rooms of the naive masses. On television, Nixon's deadpan image projects, if anything, graven; Kennedy, smoother in style, seems only a little more adept.

CONTRASTED with the real professionals of mass media, with suave Walter Cronkite for example, there is something touching about the candidates' stances. An unintentional but (in such a context) unavoidable note of hectoring rings throughout the correspondents' poised interrogations. The cameras are harsh toward the distinguished victims. Recurrently, the Vice President is surprised in attitudes of gloomy unease, as if he had blundered into the studio on the way to the washroom; the Senator is revealed at off-moments to be wincing, as if in pain. In short, the debates indicate that a political leader is not, after all, a professional entertainer, that the two vocations are not quite yet identical.

NevertheIess, the candidates are adventurers. It is appropriate that men not yet old have set the precedent. This willingness to play a game the counters of which are luck, grace and passion, and the stakes of which are nothing short of everything, implies, I think, the kind of intrepidity we associate with the young. For have the risks of any single campaign appearance ever been so high as in these debates?

TELEVISION, a medium for nuance, cruelly magnifies the amateur's smallest untrue gesture. Nixon and Kennedy, both of whom have often appeared singly on this medium, were now addressing not only the mass audience but also that most dangerous audience of all, each other--and without rehearsed speeches. The hazards of presenting an ideological position in this framework are alarming. A false presentation--which is what an amateur's attempt to project himself might involve--can discredit not only the candidate, but also (and quite unjustly) his approach to those questions of historical gravity which now face the nation. So the candidates' air of gingerly constraint, and that absence from the debates of verbal fireworks which our television commentators --so eager to be amused--have so reproachfully noted, seem hardly surprising. What does seem remarkable is that the participants should have submitted themselves at all to this harrowing ordeal.

By submitting to the ordeal, however, both candidates have focused the issues of this election with high clarity. They have disclosed that, so long as our leaders remain amateurs, television, despite its dangers for the amateur, can render the national dialectic with unprecedented effectiveness. The debates were not entertaining, that is the nation's luck. Yet, since they exacted of the candidates a courage nothing short of Presidential, their dramatic fascinations were immense. One will not soon forget how the fade which closed each session revealed each man at his podium pilloried in loneliness--will any of us ever be, in quite that way, quite that lonely?

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.