The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Television and the Future of Politics For two of the past four days, I heard the McCarthy-Army fracas on the radio. For two days, I watched it on television. The...
...But now these lazy or half-illiterate citizens are getting fuller reports on some great national events through television than anyone received a few years ago...
...William Jennings Bryan was by far the greatest public speaker of my time, but he failed in four earnest and elaborate attempts...
...Our regular activities, such as the sessions of Congress, have never been broadcast...
...Some of the worst speakers in the world have been elected President of the United States...
...The substantial facts about political developments are reported in only about a dozen papers, headed by the New York Times...
...Daniel Webster was our greatest orator, but he never made the Presidency...
...In the second place, people seem to have a feeling against, rather than in favor of, speakers who are too smooth...
...They would, on the average, prove fairly dull, and the regular commercial broadcasting companies could not be expected to take them over...
...The possibilities of this sort of thing are tremendous...
...And this may produce a demand for more sensitive mechanisms of government...
...Those who are worried about the danger of mob rule through the use of this new means of communication may quiet their fears...
...I take exception...
...It is suggested that the wide use of television as a political instrument would bring success in politics to the photogenic movie star...
...It is largely on the basis of such indications that we have learned from childhood to make up our minds about men's characters...
...It may start something like a revolution in politics...
...Citizens will know more quickly and adequately what is going on...
...This notion may have been strengthened by the fact that President Eisenhower was taken in hand during his election campaign by a Park Avenue advertising firm and, since his inauguration, has received expert help from Robert Montgomery...
...Friday night, I went to dinner with a group of friends who had spent much of the day in front of the far-seeing little screens in their living rooms...
...The experience has left me more than ever convinced that television points the way to a new era in our political life...
...We watch their motions...
...The popular dailies which go to millions of homes prefer to get their circulation on the basis of headlines, captions and pictures...
...They had seen and listened to Senators and to the Secretary of the Army...
...They knew as quickly and accurately as anyone what had been said and done...
...And the mob spirit has a better opportunity to develop in a great crowd listening to a magnetic speaker than in millions of homes where family groups listen to speakers or watch events...
...Up to the coming of television, a very small percentage of our population received anything like adequate information about important national affairs...
...When they uttered their views, they did so with a sense of authority...
...At present, it is limited to special events...
...These people talked as if they had been in Washington...
...They will be able to determine more rapidly what to think of men and of measures...
...They were all just ordinary citizens, taxpayers, voters...
...Surely little knots of relatives or neighbors talking things over before a television screen would be less susceptible to mob influence than any other body imaginable...
...If we are ever to have regular television broadcasting of national political processes, we must have regular facilities provided at public expense...
...It is a revolution in communication...
...They did not have to wait for the papers...
...They had had a chance to form original opinions about what was going on in a dramatic legislative investigation...
...Most of the dailies lack space for adequate coverage...
...Discussion is a refrigerating operation...
...Such television presentations as we received on the Kefauver Committee, the National Conventions of 1952 and now the McCarthy-Army investigation are in one respect superior to anything we can get from the printed page...
...It is not difficult to foresee a new series of amendments to the Constitution...
...In the first place, no amount of make-up or coaching can cover up a man's character...
...I am taking for granted that, in the course of time, adequate measures will be taken to make fuller use of television in our political operations...
...As our facilities develop, our psychological responsiveness will develop with them...
...We catch the intimate expressions of eyes and lips...
...None of my fellow diners was a politician...
...From the beginning of our history, the American people have been little susceptible to emotional influences...
...The theory probably is that the customers don't know how to read or are too lazy...
...At the dinner of which I spoke, the performers were practically stripped bare before our eyes...
...We look through a person's face into his soul and decide whether he is honest and decent...
...We see and hear the characters...
...But they talked with a sense of sureness that comes from knowing what you are talking about...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 19
