Television's impact on American political campaigns since the 1950s

American History since 1877

Until the advent of commercial television in the United States in the early 1950s, political campaigns in this country depended on newspapers, magazines and radio shows to reach the American people, and town hall meetings were still used as well, arguably for more than the 'photo ops' they provide to TV news crews these days. Anyone who was treated to the 'dueling banjos' of the last presidential campaign, in which the 'fight songs' of Bush and Kerry were played in endless counterpoint on every TV station in the nation, must wonder how much TV had changed politics, making the entire event into a media circus rather than what it once is rumored to have been, an exchange of ideas about how best to continue the great experiment that is American democracy.

TV critic Hilton Kramer noted in an article in the New Criterion that "the invention of television must be considered second only to the creation of the atom bomb in a list of the greatest disasters that have befallen the twentieth century."

The rest of his article concerned the misrepresentation of 1950s television by a 1990s History Channel documentary purporting to chronicle such seminal political/television events as the McCarthy hearings and their search for 'communists' under every byline or film credit, and other neo-liberal attitudes.

Truth in broadcasting

While the History Channel in the late 1990s painted one picture of American political and international life in the 1950s, Kramer notes that TV at the time painted a far different picture. At the time, TV was a means for America to celebrate its positive qualities, and there were many in the aftermath of World War II. In the 1950s, Kramer noted, TV reiterated and even celebrated for the American people the story of their bravery in a war that might never have involved the U.S. At all, at least in Europe, except for our volunteering to help. In addition, it recounted every night the:

Extraordinary political magnanimity toward our vanquished adversaries in the Second World War, going to immense expense to lay the foundations for the creation of democratic societies in German and Japan, nations which had so recently attempted to destroy us.

Kramer notes that it was in the 1950s that the sobriquet "evil empire" was bestowed on the Soviet Union.

This had the effect of casting that nation in an unfavorable light, and doing so in what would later become known as a 'sound bite,' a quick, catchy reference that meant virtually the same thing to everyone who was familiar with it. In short, 'evil empire' was an advertising slogan, created by TV's political pundits. Suddenly, it became easy to gain political mileage not in 25 words or less, but in a mere two.

Coming to you 'live' from the universe

During the 1950s, the United States shouldered most of the burden and expense of the Cold War, opposing the Soviet Union and resisting the spread of its reign of totalitarian terror. All this was exposed on TV, a more 'interactive' medium than print so that the population could see at least a version of the 'live' truth of what was happening globally, not to mention within domestic borders. It is impossible to conclude that this was without effect on the American voter; certainly, it was an important to politicians who were learning what television could do for them. It is widely believed that, just after the close of the 1950s, when Richard M. Nixon opposed John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the first presidential race of the 1960s, that it was Nixon's wooden, unapproachable and tense 'live' presence on television that ruined his chances as much as anything; it got to the point that people have even attributed Nixon's loss to Kennedy, whose face TV 'loved', to the fact that Nixon had a serious problem with 'five o'clock shadow,' and thus appeared sinister, especially on the black and white television screens of the day.

Freud and the American political animal

The other major innovation that affected American life, and thus American politics, in the 1950s was the rise in acceptance of Freudian psychoanalysis. IN fact, according to Kramer:

Freudian concepts of sexuality and the family, often in popularized versions, exerted a far greater influence on both private life and cultural life in the late 1940s and 1950s than, say, the Cold War. They dominated the advertising industry as well as Hollywood and Broadway, and deeply affected the way many people lived -- even people who had never read a line that Freud himself had written or submitted to the ordeals of the psychoanalytic couch.

There is both good and bad in that, just as there is in the fact that politicians could not get their message to the people in a form they would remember and understand, and, arguably, use as a basis for voting. Kramer says, however, that television distorts all information it offers because the medium needs to simplify the material in the service of speed, visual clarity, and instant comprehension.

Unfortunately, because the comprehension of the American people must be assumed to be at a somewhat lower level than that of the politicians, the message will be reduced to its most simplistic form. What is amazing is that it took so many decades for anyone to really object to the 'dumbing down' of information offered on television.

Women and broadcasting

Even British commentators noted that broadcast television was most prized because of its immediacy, the "what you see is happening now, as you see it"

effect.

One of the other things happening, in culture and in life and therefore in politics, was the differences in the way women expected life to be. It could be argued interminably whether television encouraged the women's movement, or the women's movement changed television coverage of women (since suffrage had been on the agenda since before radio was invented, it is unlikely one could substantiate a claim that television created the women's movement). However, it suffices to say that television quickly realized it had to address a female audience, and that alone would put a different 'spin' on how political information was provided in the medium. "The working woman at home, a woman who, it is also frequently acknowledged, may also be working outside the home, contributing to if not solely providing for the family's income, is thus present in the televisual discourses of 1955-6, though it is a momentary presence."

Thumim argues that the presence of women in the minds of television programmers in no way suggests an equality; rather, women were acknowledged but were still relegated to the position of second string, within the "boundary of the masculine."

Further, Thumim suggests that this set up a tension between the needs of women in programming and the desires of men, a tension that, she says, was resolved in early television by the demeaning of woman in the roles they portrayed in comedy and drama, and in their presence generally on the air waves.

In fact, anyone who recalls 1950s entertainment programming will recall the dizzy redhead in I Love Lucy, the obsequiously deferential 'mom' in Leave It To Beaver, and even into the 1960s, the fluffy, brainless mannequins such as those on Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie.

This does not have a direct effect on politics, of course, except insofar as it has a direct effect on women's perceptions of themselves and of what they desire in a politician, the great majority of whom were still men. Based on Thumim's work, it is possible to suggest that the reason John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the White House had little to do with his wealth, his brains, the party's backing, his WWII heroism or even his obviously intelligent wife. In view of Thumim's claims, it is possible to conclude that a nation of devalued women -- 'put down' on television sitcoms for more than a decade -- were looking for a knight in shining armor to, if not save them, at least be charming to them while keeping them under lock and key. Certainly, that would have to be counted as a stunning impact of television on American politics. If this is only partly true, then one would have to conclude that television helped sunder the political sensibilities of voters in the United States along gender lines.

It should be noted, too, that broadcast personnel were virtually all men. Even Barbara Walters, in her early career in the early 1960s, was only allowed to do 'puff' pieces about things of interest mainly to men; as late as 1975, her assignments included undercover work at a Playboy nightclub.

Thumim notes that coverage of the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco was considered the best in 'women's political reportage in the 1950s.

That might be considered status quo in terms of political coverage on early television except for that fact that, Thumim points out, the major networks both in the U.S. And Europe disregarded the visit of Russian leaders to the west because of the need to cover the 'women's story of Grace Kelly and her prince. In their bid to denigrate women, television's early programming chiefs arguably changed the course of world politics as well, by how much it would be impossible to say.

Changing a way of life

The repression of women was carried over into movies, Thumim notes. That alone would not constitute an effect on American politics caused by television, except for this: television had diminished the audiences for movies. So, even if movies had offered a more balanced portrayal of women, fewer women -- and fewer men -- were going to the movies anyway. Changing the conduct of the American public, a public, which had used movies throughout the Depression for escapism and during WWII for encouragement, must certainly have had an effect on politics. Indeed, it was now possible to assume one was well-informed simply because one had watched a television news show; arguably, moviegoers who had seen a short piece on the Movietone News between the main feature and the second feature would not think they were well informed. They might then have gone home to read the newspaper and find out more about any given political issue. With television waiting at home, they could forego the newspaper. And, as the news shorts and double-features disappeared from the movie theatres, that once again forced the American public into a narrower selection of sources form which to obtain political information, and, unfortunately, the most common remaining source was gender-skewed and sound-bite heavy. The result had necessarily to be one thing; the start of the erosion of political intelligence in the American public, an erosion that certainly demonstrated itself in the last presidential campaign, no matter which side of that fence one was on.