In his book The Seven Habits..., Stephen Covey asserted that up until around 1950, Western society functioned under what he called the Character Ethic. Then, with the advent of television, we moved into what Covey calls the Personality Ethic. This, in my opinion, is reflected in the way so-called presidential debates are now conducted (compare them to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates). The purpose of debates has changed from a detailed discussion of substantive issues to the staged, glossy exhibition of human personality.
Dwight Eisenhower was the last Character Ethic president we have had. People didn’t vote for him because of how he looked or spoke. They weren’t overly concerned about his personality. He was elected on the basis of his proven character and accomplishments in, and after, WWII. Immediately after him we had the Kennedy-Nixon debates where Nixon lost due to his five o’clock shadow, which gave him, in the opinion of many, a sinister look. Kennedy became our first Personality Ethic president, and no one would deny that he had an extremely charming and engaging personality. Johnson won the next election on sympathy, but Nixon won twice, at least partly because his personality trumped that of his opponents (Nixon was full of personality, he just didn’t have enough to beat Kennedy.)
Think of the next seven elections: in every case the one with the most engaging personality won. Carter over Ford (at the time, Carter’s down-home persona seemed more appealing than the mid-western personality of Gerald Ford, which came off as rather staid and boring). Reagan, with his sparking personality, then toppled Carter for obvious reasons. He also trounced the rather bland Mondale. Now, no one could accuse Bush I of being overflowing with vivacious personality, but even he had more personality than the diminutive Michael Dukakis. Of course, it wasn’t enough to thwart the power of the highly personable Bubba (arguably the greatest triumph of personality over substance and experience). Clinton also had enough to utterly trounce the respectable but monotoned Bob Dole. Then came Bush II, who is only slightly more of a jewel than his father, yet seems utterly dazzling when compared to the wooden Algore and snobbish Kerry.
I believe that we have now moved as a society into the era of the Celebrity Ethic. In other words, a person no longer needs even an attractive or provocative personality, much less a thoughtful position on the key issues of the day (e.g. Algore, Hillary, Paris Hilton, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, etc.). The only thing a person needs is that vacuous attribute called celebrity. Remember those shows like Hollywood Squares. Who were some of those people in those little boxes? What had they ever done? The answer is, nothing. They weren’t in there because of the quality of their character and usually it wasn’t even because of a sparkling personality. What they had is celebrity!
The Celebrity Ethic is now playing itself out in the presidential race. Barack Obama’s personality is bland and pundit-like. Sure, he comes off as cool and self-assured, but those are not qualities that engender warm feelings and cause us to enjoy being around a person. No, Mr. Obama is not where he is because of his arresting personality. And it is certainly not because of his proven character (which has not been proven) or because Americans have taken a hard look at his proposals and find them to be admirable and worthy of implementation. No, Mr. Obama is where he is because somehow, in the process of this interminable election process, he became a celebrity!
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2 comments:
This is a spot-on analysis, Dave.
The question becomes: Where and how did Obama acquire this celebrity persona? Why, in other words, is he a "rock star?"
His utterances are banal, his policy prescriptions shopworn (they seem new to many in the country because America has until now been smart enough to avoid the dead end socialist prescriptions that he trots out as the answer to our problems),and his fundamental makeup is palpably narcissistic. He has not been known to ever utter anything of true wit, displays no noticeable sense of humor. Why then this celebrity status?
It's telling that where Obama first caught fire, in fact, was in Hollywood. The celebrity culture there spotted something in him they identified with: novelty, narcissism, an inability to engage reality at an adult level.
Whatever, the celebrity brushed off on him and has "stuck."
I think we'll pay a price for this for now, likely a steep price. One day, though, sooner rather than later, something will happen that will jolt us out of these frivolous preoccupations that seem so important to us just now. Global warming. Going green. Choosing celebrities as our leaders. Something is brewing out there - history doesn't end, after all - that will demand of us as a people that we once again put character at the center of our criteria for selecting leaders. We will, in the end and for a time, put away our childish things.
He’s as worthy and substantive a celebrity as Paris Hilton.
Of course, the image-maker David Axelrod has given Obama a generic, phony “image” to camouflage his communist ideology. The media and a bunch of mindless fools have done the rest.
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