I saw some photos of Al Gore partying after his concession speech. He looked like a real guy. As Jimmy Fallon said on Saturday Night Live, “That’s not Al Gore… That’s the Gorester!” He was dancing, with a soaked shirt from being sprayed with champagne and with a bottle of beer in his hand.
If the public had seen THAT Al Gore, he would have been elected. Instead, all they got to see of him was the robotic, inhuman simulacrum portrayed on TV.
I saw some footage of George Bush speaking with some important Washington insiders. He had them in the palm of his hand. He seemed articulate and in command. But during the election, all we saw was the deer in the headlights, as he strode out and spoke in measured sentences, reading off a teleprompter. It made him look stupid.
Conventional wisdom now is that the public was clamoring to see the ‘real’ people inside the candidates. But all we got to see was the predigested pap their ‘handlers’ made them spew.
Why do these guys allow this? Why didn’t Gore come out as ‘himself’ earlier in the campaign? He must have seen the polls, and the claim that the people thought he was stiff and phony. So instead of being himself, he let his handlers re-tool him into Al Gore 2.0, the latest revision of the robot.
Do you think there will be more pressure in the future for candidates to be more informal, or will the pressure of 24 hour news mean that they have to be even more protected by handlers? Is this a good thing or bad?
