The Ultimate TV Candidacy

On Sept. 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon faced off in the first televised presidential debate. What they said was secondary to how they looked and behaved: Kennedy was charming, tan and wore makeup that pleased the camera; Nixon was underweight, pale and refused powder that could have covered a five o’clock shadow.

As a result, those who watched the debate on TV picked Kennedy the winner by a mile. Radio listeners, in contrast, picked Nixon, believing he had done a better job responding to questions.

“The Great Debates marked television's grand entrance into presidential politics. They afforded the first real opportunity for voters to see their candidates in competition, and the visual contrast was dramatic,” Erika Tyner Allen wrote for the Museum of Broadcast Communications. “Those television viewers focused on what they saw, not what they heard.”

Forty-two years later, it has come to this: Rupert Murdoch and FOX's cable channel, FX, are bringing to television American Candidate, an American Idol-like game/talent show in which 100 political hopefuls will strut their stuff in an attempt to be picked by couch potatoes nationwide to run for president (apply here).

It is, perhaps, the ultimate merger of popular culture and politics. Audience members and at-home viewers, voting by telephone and Internet, will reduce the number of "candidates" each week. The public will pick the winner from the final three, and the results will be broadcast live from the the Mall in Washington, D.C., in July, 2004. Buoyed by the publicity, the winner will presumably be encouraged to run as a third party candidate.

Surprisingly, the United States wasn’t the first country to propose such an idea. A Buenos Aires television channel beat Murdoch by a couple of weeks when, in early September, it announced the launch of The People’s Candidate, a reality TV show that will not only put its winner up as a congressional candidate in 2003, but will also launch a new political party.

According to the BBC, “About 800 people have already auditioned for [The People’s Candidate], including pensioners, transvestites and the unemployed. The search is already underway as judges whittle the hopefuls down to 16 who will appear on the show.”

It's enough to make one laugh for Argentina, much less cry -- but just remember a U.S. network is in on it, too. You could read many things into this: Is it a sure sign of the apocalypse? A natural extension of the Survivor and American Idol-ized global phenomenon? A wonderful, Marxian chance for the proletariat to rise to prominence (although the elite still control the airwaves, so that wouldn’t go too far)? Or is it merely another step in the evolution of the political campaign?

After all, turning the U.S. presidential race into a long, contrived television program would require fewer adjustments than one might think. Campaigns are already so structured that, much like “reality TV,” they are hardly “real” at all. Networks have cut back their coverage of national party conventions because nothing unscripted happens. Only C-SPAN stays tuned.

Remember the 2000 Republican convention, in which organizers paraded members of minority groups across the stage as a sea of white faces looked up from the crowd, all the while keeping far-right, controversial figures such as Texas Rep. Tom DeLay out of sight? That wasn’t reality -- that was sleight of hand, a bag of tricks.

The Democrats pulled their own tricks during Al Gore’s nominating convention. Bring in Bill and Hillary on the first night, then get ’em out the door. Bring in the religious senator Joe Lieberman two nights later to wipe the moral slate clean. Don’t let America be distracted by scandals, real and purported; make it clear that Gore is “his own man.” Still not convinced? Cue up the movie directed by MTV-video-director-turned-film-director Spike Jonze that shows off Gore’s adventurous side and portrays him as a kind, honest family man: the anti-Clinton.