It's not enough being president - you also have to play one on TV - Pres, Bill Clinton

National Catholic Reporter, March 5, 1993 by Danny Duncan Collum

Remember those drug commercials where Robert Young used to begin his pitch, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV"? These days, it's not enough to be president -- you also have to play president on TV.

You not only have to run the country, but you must also appear on television to embody the nation's hopes and reflect back to the people their own collective potential for good or evil. That's what Bill Clinton has spent much of the past month doing -- playing Mr. President. Fortunately, he's a young man and, unlike his two predecessors, able to play the role and do the job at the same time.

But, despite Clinton's reputation as a studious policy wonk, his administration has so far been most successful when he's been playing president on TV. In purely television terms, he's made a good start at his own long-running version of "Mr. Clinton Goes to Washington."

Writing, as I am, a mere 16 hours after the event, Clinton's first State of the Union address appears to have been an enormous success. But Clinton came off well on the tube right from his inaugural beginning.

Despite their relatively modest November victory, the Clinton-Gore team laid claim to the illusion that their inauguration was cause for nonpartisan national celebration. And by claiming that illusion so persistently and persuasively, they actually made it real.

This was the message of the trip to Monticello and the ringing of all those surrogate Liberty Bells. The inaugural events evoked images of Clinton's own favored version of the American mythos. That is the vision of the American civic community as an extended family that draws strength from its diversity and interdependence.

That is very "politically correct" stuff, when you break it down. But it came couched not in the insular jargon of correctitude but in the down-home Americanisms of a "family reunion" on the Washington Mall. A fiesta that, not coincidentally, also provided a weeklong stream of video-friendly images for the ready and willing network evening news.

Clinton's 15-minute inaugural speech brilliantly rang the bells of generational change; did it right in old George's face, to boot. And he got off at least one genuinely quotable quote with the line about "there's nothing wrong with America that can't be cured by what's right with America."

But the inaugural ceremony reached well beyond the usual realm of political rhetoric and symbolism. Clinton's speech was really just an addendum to Maya Angelou's poem for the day. Angelou projected a vision of America older than our nation-state, and older even than the history of white settlement on these shores.

Clinton's 10-minute warning speech on the economy, given on the Monday before the State of the Union address, was a mistake. The purpose was to inoculate, the public against all the news stories about new taxes by giving them the worst possible news up front, in bald, unvarnished terms. The ploy failed because it scared people.

Clinton failed to allow for the crippling public cynicism about political language that is one of the legacies of the Reagan-Bush years. People now assume that politicians are always candy-coating the facts and that reality is far worse than anyone will say. So when Clinton came on with nothing but bad news, be aroused peoples' worst fears and ignited a state of public alarm.

He appeared to redeem himself with the State of the Union speech bravura performance. My guess is that the Republicans in the chamber who took the low road and laughed in the president's face during his speech will live to regret it.

All of this stuff about image-making and myth-mongering is fascinating on the pop-cultural level, but it also matters enormously in political terms. Reagan, or Reagan's people, showed us by their calculated practice what JFK had first demonstrated by intuition.

What people get from TV is not just a literal message, but an emotional connection, and even a sense of personal relationship. And those nonrational perceptions often move political behavior more effectively than does conscious and calculated argument.

By now Americans have swirling in their heads a collection of presidential pictures and sound bites that represent our country's political history. My own clear memories kick in with LBJ's "I will not seek or accept the nomination of my party," and then quickly degenerate into a long Nixonian nightmare of Cambodian invasions and Saturday Night Massacres.

For today's postcollegiate twentysomethings, the tradition may begin with Jimmy Carter, in his sweater, nagging us to turn down the heat and apologizing for messing up the hostage thing.

But the role became most important during the Reagan years. The old film actor seemed to view his eight, year run in Washington as one very long location shoot, with short hours and really neat perks. Of course, by the end Reagan had become as laughable as the man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz."

But, as Clinton well knows, for decades to come presidential success will be judged by then standard of the first Reagan term, which was, more than anything, a television success.