Caleb: How to Win an Election
I’m so far behind on my Mac Monday reading and watching that part of me feels ashamed to be charging ahead with my own agenda and sending you guys something to chew on. Oh well, who gives a shit.
For my Mac Monday, I’m passing out a mini documentary that was produced by the New York Times and is about on the cheif media strategist for George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. This is not me endorsing Bush in any way. The guy was a listless windbag who can be credited only with tormenting this country and the world at large with his idiocy. But back to the documentary… It’s a look at the ways presidential campaigns harness (and abuse) narrative. The film provides a short but incisive look at the ways politicians rely storytelling to define themselves in the public eye. And the trouble, of course, is that the narrative they construct is calcuated to play on fear or hope, to create humanist but perhaps inauthentic dichatomies between their candidacy and another’s. Consider Bush’s story (“I’m just a regular straight-shooter from Texas”) versus Gore’s (“I’m Bill Clinton’s scion”): the irony is that Bush (son of a former president, graduate of some of the world’s most elite, and former governor of one of the nation’s second most populous state) was far from regular.
At it’s core, the doc is about the ways story can be used to manipulate and propagandize. That’s at play in the 2016 election. But it isn’t confined to politics. Story has lately been fetishized. In the 21st century’s revival of the oral tradition — Ted Talks, The Moth, “Serial” — storytelling has conscripted power that extends beyond that vested in ancient narratives, where the power came from entertaining and challenging the listener’s intelligence. These days stories, with their accessible aura of authenticity and truth-telling, play on the listener’s trust. And the listener who is too quick to trust is an easy mark.