The stories candidates tell
Franklin Roosevelt never publicized his wheelchair. John Kennedy carefully hid his Addison’s disease and back problems. But Sen. John Kerry talks openly about his treatment last year for prostate cancer. Why the change?
American politicians have always told stories about themselves to illustrate their low origins or high virtues. Think of George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin.
But in today’s made-for-television culture, the more personal the stories, the better. Television is such an intimate medium that successful candidates have to connect directly with voters on an emotional level. And Kerry, long known as a flinty, frozen patrician, seems to have figured that out.
Perhaps the most important question any pollster ever asks is some version of this: “Does he/she understand voters like you?” Even when most Americans knew that Bill Clinton was lying to them, his approval ratings defied gravity. The reason: voters still thought he could identify with their troubles.
Kerry talks about his illness because it shows folks that he’s not just a pampered blueblood, that he’s suffered adversity just like them, and that he’s had the fortitude to bounce back.
The importance of The Story helps explain why Howard Dean suddenly asked his wife to join him for an interview with Diane Sawyer, and then gave away countless copies of the TV show. This was Dean’s way of saying, “I’m not just a policy wonk or antiwar warrior. I have a personal life, I was a doctor before I was a politician.”
This is all part of a larger trend, the president’s growing role in national life as “entertainer-in-chief.” Americans increasingly see their president as the star of a continuing soap opera or miniseries. Call it “The Real West Wing.” And any TV series needs dramatic story lines to attract good ratings.
Of course, having a great story is no guarantee of political success. Bob Dole came home from World War II with a crippled arm, but he was clobbered by Clinton, who never served a day in uniform. John McCain’s exploits as a POW in Vietnam failed to gain him the GOP nomination. John Glenn’s career as an astronaut was glorified in the book and movie “The Right Stuff,” but on the campaign trail Glenn was a real stiff and never came close to winning.
Still, Richard Nixon was the last elected president to reach the Oval Office without a compelling life story. Jimmy Carter was a naval officer turned peanut farmer, a man of the soil who would never lie. Ronald Reagan was a small-town Midwesterner with an alcoholic father, but his real talent was playing heroes in the movies.
George Bush the Elder was a combat pilot in the Pacific who, like many returning veterans, started a new life in the West after the war. Early in Clinton’s campaign, his handlers were startled to learn that voters thought of him as a privileged rich kid who went to Georgetown, Oxford and Yale. That’s when they trotted out the tale of his struggling mother, raising him alone in a town called Hope.
Like John Kerry, George Bush the Younger was hardly born in a log cabin, so he had to find his story of struggle and redemption elsewhere. Instead of prostate cancer, Bush’s burden was alcohol, which he overcame with the help of Laura and the Lord.
A good story has to be real, not forced. That’s why Kerry is effective in talking about his own illness, about his parents’ declining days, about his wartime buddies. “Check out my gut, check out my heart,” he says, and he’s right to do so.
Voters want to know about both qualities in a leader. And Kerry’s stories have helped humanize his image and craft a new episode in his personal miniseries: “The Comeback Kerry.”
(Cokie and Steven Roberts are syndicated columnists.)