| When Ronald Reagan turned to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 televised presidential debate | ||
| and said: 'There you go again', he apparently struck a chord with millions of viewers - to the | ||
| extent that this informal-sounding conversational remark was still in people's minds four years | ||
| later. | ||
| 5 | However, when he used the same line during the first of this year's televised debates - the | |
| second is due today - he came badly unstuck. Walter Mondale had taken the trouble to study | ||
| a video tape of the 1980 encounter, and had a reply ready in case Reagan tried it again. He also | ||
| managed to adopt an equally conversational style, opening his counter-attack with: ' Remember | ||
| the last time you said that?' | ||
| 10 | The television camera promptly switched to the president, revealing an expression of | |
| bewilderment on his face which suggested that, indeed, he could not. His memory had evidently | ||
| failed him and opened the way for his age to be discussed damagingly in public. | ||
| More generally, there's little doubt that the key to effective television communication involves | ||
| mastering verbal and non-verbal techniques which are quite different from those politicians have | ||
| 15 | relied on for more than 2000 years . The traditional skills of oratory no longer enjoy a monopoly, | |
| and are increasingly giving way to a new style of low-key conversational rhetoric. | ||
| The reason is th at techniques that are highly effective for reaching people on the back row of | ||
| a large auditorium have a quite different impact when seen clos e up. Skilfully co-ordinated | ||
| gestures, carefully crafted sentences and poetic-sounding cadences are likely to come over on | ||
| 20 | the small screen as unnecessarily exaggerated. One of RonaId Reagan's most significant technical | |
| innovations has been a conversational style of oratory finely tuned to the homely context of the | ||
| mass television audience . | ||
| Television programming also operates within severe time constraint, which puts politicians who | ||
| need more than a few minutes to develop an argument at a serious disadvantage. News bulletins | ||
| 25 | require a continual supply of quotable quotes in which the gist of a message is conveyed in | |
| seconds rather than minutes. And here again, with his inimitable brand of one-liners, Reagan has | ||
| found yet another effective way of operating. | ||
| How, then, did such an accomplished performer go wrong in the op ening debate with Walter | ||
| Mondale? The most likely answer is that he simply departed too far from the script, thereby | ||
| 30 | permitting Mondale to expose the main, and perhaps the only, weakness in Reagan's te levisua I | |
| technique. Being able to sound conversational is one thing, but to do so from a script is quite | ||
| another. It is a rare skill, part of the stock-in-trade of professional broadcasters and screen actors. | ||
| But the snag is that an ability to perform from a text as if there were no text at all provides no .- | ||
| guarantee that a speaker will also be able to handle the open-ended uncertainties of a more,. | ||
| 35 | free-flowing conversational debate. | |
| Apart from the televised campaign confrontations, the Republicans have been remarkably | ||
| successful in insulating their leader from unscripted encounters with political opponents. The US | ||
| constitution, with its separation of powers between legislature and execut ive*, has insulated him | ||
| just as effectively from the rough and tumble of debate in congress. | ||
| 40 | Far from demonstrating that his opponent's televisual technique is in serious dec1ine, Mondale | |
| may have done no more than highlight the fact that the president 's conversational repertoire is | ||
| not (and perhaps never was) complete . Certainl y, in thi s respect, Reagan 's skilIs wer e shown to | ||
| be limited, but one of the lessons of the past four years has been that an American president can | ||
| survive perfectly well without such qualities. | ||
| Max Atkinson in The Sunday Times. October 21, 1984 |