NEW STYLES IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING
Holmes, John Haynes
New Styles In Political Campaigning By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES THE late Presidential campaign was a pretty feeble affair, at least as compared with the traditional campaigns of yesteryear. Think of the...
...But no candidate was ever more contemptuous of an audience than he...
...We Americans are not so natural, spontaneous, exuberant, naive, as we used to be...
...The mechanism of it all is plain enough...
...Roosevelt has made himself the master...
...The President just comes into our homes, and sits down with us, and talks things over...
...Roosevelt discovered years ago that it was not necessary to gather a great aggregation of his fellow-citizens into a public hall in order to address the nation...
...They are getting to be something of an old story, and seem not so everlastingly decisive in a nation's life...
...But we have none such today...
...What is it...
...In the old days, a speaker could reach only the audience before him...
...Willkie in 1940, with hoarse voice and almost inarticulate delivery, staged something of an old-style campaign of which this year we knew little...
...But never at any time is there the slightest suggestion of space, and amplitude, and eloquence, and soaring passion...
...Dewey appeared just in time to "go on the air" and retired immediately he was "off the air...
...In the morning he will talk to housewives, schools, and colleges...
...The projection of his voice is excellent, his timing sure, his precision impeccable...
...With such a stupendous historic drama on the world's stage, our Presidential side-show could hardly be expected to attract undue attention, much less convulse the emotions of the people...
...As the movie drove out vaudeville, so modern publicity machinery has driven out the old-fashioned methods of electioneering...
...But they no more belong to the category of oratory than Frank Sinatra's singing belongs to the category of grand opera...
...What the radio has done to oratory it is doing to the whole stage-setting of oratory...
...Dewey in his campaign went through most of the traditional performance of standing up on a platform and speaking face to face with a great audience...
...His diction is flawless, his conversational style the essence of ease and grace, his whole manner that of the perfectly trained broadcaster...
...His speeches were not orations determined in length by the content of his argument, but talks perfectly tailored to the radio half-hour, with an opening five minutes for ovation, and a closing three minutes for "station announcements...
...Everywhere heard, nowhere seen, the candidate will become for a little time a kind of disembodied spirit, discoursing revelation to the multitudes...
...At the noon-hour, he will address the workers at their luncheons...
...Thus the institution of the "fireside chat" was established in our American life...
...We have become sophisticated, and thus accustomed not to get so excited but to take things more or less in our stride...
...He could do this much more easily, and likewise more effectively, by staying in the White House and talking quietly over a nation-wide hook-up of radio stations...
...The endeavor under such circumstances was to gather the largest possible audience at any one time and place, to give the candidate a hearing...
...It was a superb job for the invisible audience, but one was frequently tempted to wonder what the visible audience thought of it all...
...What is this new type of invisible campaigning going to do to us ? We do not know...
...Torchlights and red-fire make a grand display on the dark streets which prevailed in grandpa's day, but are woefully ineffective in the brilliantly illuminated avenues of the present hour...
...Dewey, who has carefully trained himself to the business not of public speaking but of radio talking...
...Parades belong to the days of foot and horse, not of automobiles and airplanes...
...President Roosevelt, for example, often highly praised as an orator, as a matter of fact is not an orator at all...
...William Jennings Bryan, in his three campaigns, thought nothing of speaking 15 and 20 times a day...
...But this last campaign began late, and was leisurely throughout...
...His voice, baritone in quality, is a fair match for Mr...
...Think of the "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" campaign of 1840, the Cleveland-Blaine campaign of 1884, the McKinley-Bryan campaign of 1896, and the Wilson-Taft-Roosevelt (Theodore) campaign of 1912...
...The total number of so-called major addresses by Mr...
...It is true that, in this recent campaign, both candidates kept up the old practice of addressing mass meetings...
...At night people will be expected to be in their homes, and every evening the candidate's voice will ride the waves of air...
...A candidate did well with two or three speeches a week...
...Sen...
...A Presidential campaign, after all, seems pretty tame and inconsequential as cotnpared with what is going on across the seas...
...And it is a momentous question, for the whole character and even survival of democracy may be wrapped up in it...
...Of his own vocal strength and skill alone he must reach the farthest spaces of these great auditoriums...
...But no more in his case than in that of the President do we have an orator in the classic sense...
...On a carefully prepared and carefully announced schedule, he will broadcast to listeners from "coast to coast...
...The hour of the meeting, east or west, was fixed to meet the maximum convenience not of the people assembled in the hall but of those sitting before receiving sets throughout the country...
...Again, there are the new mechanisms of popular agitation...
...His speaking comes much nearer to the standard of crooning than of oratory...
...Those were the days of true oratory—that combination of physique, voice, clear articulation, rythmic intonation, and mounting eloquence which made public speaking in the grand style to be near akin to the harmonies of an orchestra...
...Roosevelt and Mr...
...His voice is, or used to be, the ideal radio voice...
...What has become of the trans-continental trips, the back-platform speeches, the street-corner rallies, the fantastic election bets, and the raging fury of popular debate...
...At his desk, on his dining-table, by his bed, will stand the microphone ready for instant use...
...As in all matters pertaining to the influence of the machine upon the mind, this is an unanswered question...
...Where now are the parades and great mass-meetings, the torchlights and red.fire, the uniforms, banners, transparencies, bonfires, and bunting that made cities gay and life exciting for weeks together...
...Dewey, like his famous rival, is a finished performer before the microphone...
...A transparency is an impressive sight until it is matched with an electric sign, and then it looks ridiculous...
...Roosevelt's speeches are delightful, of course, because so utterly charming...
...Roosevelt's which is tenor in quality...
...The candidate, who formerly was traveling day after exciting day, will stay at home...
...A country, like an individual, grows up and matures...
...The radio has abolished oratory...
...Then there are these times in which we are living...
...Here is no flight of beating wings into the high altitudes of thought and vision, but only the smooth progress of sturdy feet along ground levels...
...A Momentous Question The mass-meeting, or rally, I repeat, is on its way out, and with it the whole paraphernalia of old-time political campaigning...
...Competing With War Well, for one thing, there comes a change...
...Crooning Replaces Oratory For one thing, the radio has completely changed the type and temper of popular oratory...
...But what about the psychology of it all...
...Afternoons will be a time for clubs and parties, and early evening for farmers...
...There was a time when a Presidential candidate began speaking in mid-Summer, and never stopped until Election Day...
...Mythology come true in an age of mechanics...
...La Follette's state campaigns, and later his national campaign in 1924, were like a tornado sweeping every nook and corner of the landscape...
...Dewey together would not equal the weekly output of a Bryan and a La Follette in the old days...
...And how can we get worked np over some of these domestic political issues when we are confronted with international problems which involve the very life and death of civilization ? A mass meeting is a poor rival to a battlefield, and the voice of a candidate is easily drowned out by the roar of cannon and the crash of bombs...
...The same is true of Mr...
...But this was obviously nothing but an artificial build-up for the radio which was already regarded as of prime importance...
...Nothing could be more persuasive, at least as practiced with the superb histrionic art of which Mr...
...Even Mr...
...Even a minority candidate like Eugene V. Debs in 1916, with no chance of being elected, boarded a "Red Special" and traveled from coast to coast, speaking almost hourly in towns, villages, and cross-road centers...
...Something has happened...
...Nothing ever remains the same...
...At all hours, day and night, street-corners will blare his utterances from loud-speakers, as already they blare those of Stalin in Moscow and once did those of Hitler in Berlin...
...The mass meeting, for example, is now very definitely on its way out...
...It is not difficult to visualize the campaigns of the future...
...After all, Presidential campaigns are not so novel as they once were...
...Before such an audience, in the New York Madison Square Garden or the Chicago Coliseum, the speaker stood unaided by any mechanical devices of any kind...
...Webster, Sumner, Phillips, Ingersoll, Bryan, Debs, La Follette—these were the great orators, trained in this exacting school...
...Then there is the radio, which more fittingly than the telephone should have spoken as its first message, "What hath God wrought...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 47
