Bottom Line: Conservatives and Republicans (not always the same thing) need to embrace new media and the greater access to the folks that comes with it. They can do so without losing their dignity . . . though it will be an easy thing to lose. Romney and other candidates should agree to a “You Tube” debate with proper advance rules.
Commentary:
There was a time when conservative magazines and quick-read books (Conscience of a Conservative) floated about the nation to be found by young activists and eagerly read as a kind of revelation.
Tucked away in church libraries or artfully left in doctor’s waiting rooms, they often had yellow pages (books printed on paper so cheap they were yellow when you got them new), but had bold ideas.
You never saw anything like it anywhere else. They were spare almost to the point of argumentative anorexia, but willing to start arguments about topics better books were ignoring. Good readers would often move from those cheap quick books to better books referenced at the end.
Talk radio was a revelation way back in the day.
People said things, some funny things and some important things, that you could not hear elsewhere. Even if it made you cringe, it got a message out and created a new “acceptable.”
At the time, intellectual gatekeepers fainted at the books (often too populist) and fulminated at the radio (as much entertainment as argument) and in one sense they were right. Some talk radio personalities
educate while they entertain, but that is not as common as might be wished.
You can love the free market while noting that is not always good for standards of excellence.
Mass culture does tend to “dumb down” the conversation and the people in the conversation. This is a big problem and it will not do to ignore it. Free markets are great at giving folks what they want . . . and sometimes we don’t know what we want.
Now a post-literate generation (the after the 1960’s crowd) is awash in new media. The War in Iraq and the story line mostly being told about it in the new media is shaping base political instincts in most folk the way Reagan did for my generation in the 1980’s. Amongst the college students I meet, it is not Republican or conservative ideas that are discovered.
It is not the experience of students now in the military shaping most of deep story believed by those getting their information from new media.
Conservatives, especially social conservatives, aren’t arguing for their positions well in this new world. Often we are not there.
There is good reason to fear going there. Dignity can be in short supply. Much of the blog world or many You Tube questions make the old Rush Limbaugh show look like a seminar from Bill Buckley. There is no reason to rejoice in this long-term decline in the level of much of political discourse.
Liberty is good, but it presents unique problems.
Short term pleasure can be more attractive than short term pain (education) for long term gain. This is true in every area of life from weight to finances. Since conservatives believe in liberty and in the value of each “common” person (created in the Image of an uncommon God), we cannot impose our values on people by force or by mere propaganda.
It is not acceptable to us to just persuade, because we want to persuade citizens not slaves.
The job of a conservative blog or new media site is, therefore, educational. It cannot rejoice in what is “wanted” in our political discourse, but it must start where our fellow citizens are at.
Ignoring where folks are at and where the conversation is taking place in search of a better set of people and a better conversation is utopian and not conservative. Pretending that the downturn in standards and discourse is not happening or is good is utopian and is the basis for much of modern “liberalism.”
A Lesson from Education
Most people aren’t reading. Is that good for the Republic? No, it is not good, but it is also not good for Republicans to put out position papers to people who will not read them and then complain.
It is not good if we hold debates not being watched by the folks most likely to become the leaders of the next generation.
The situation is educational . . . must be educational . . . and real world educators have to deal with all kinds of students. When students moan that they “don’t know what to read now that Harry Potter has ended” it is tempting to over react. Merely playing the curmudgeon and rightly pointing to the thousands of books better than Potter just a few shelves away or being overly optimistic and saying, “At least they are reading!” both miss the mark.
One misses a chance to help a student grow, even if it is discouraging that it is necessary, and the optimist also misses the chance to educate for while being a cheerleader. The curmudgeon is comfortably immune from elite criticism while the cheerleader gets to some second-hand pop-culture glow.
A good educator is usually a curmudgeonly cheerleader.
That is our job here at Scriptorium, home of the curmudgeonly cheerleader.
We groan (rightly) that people are not reading, when they do read its is often trash, point to the problem, and then try to motivate students to want to read excellent things.
We love our students enough to not wait for them to be “worthy” of education or just give them what they want without challenging them.
Applying this Lesson to Running for Office
Conservatives and Republicans are going to need to do the same thing in the world of new media.
Entertainment can be overdone and governance is serious business.
The Need for Dignity
Presidents need dignity and as Bill Clinton found winning without it means you will never have it. Dignity helps in three ways. First, some nations don’t share our informal culture and if our leaders put on snowmen suits themselves, then these other leaders will have a hard time taking us as seriously as we need them to do.
(”I know he is saying this means war, but isn’t he the guy in the snow man suit?”)
Second, dignity wears well over time. The up to date is soon dated and cringe worthy. A presidential candidate may not look “cool” in his suits, but it is rare that he will be ashamed of his pictures. A dignified-type will wear well in office all other things (like policy success!) being equal when compared to a hip-type.
Elizabeth II is not cool, Reagan was not cool, but both chose looks that were adult and have worn well with time.
Finally, dignity is usually (though not always) an external sign of the internal virtue of self-control.
A man or woman can be dignified even when everyone else around them is not and this is the key to the You Tube debate and all other “new media” for traditionalists.
We must be in this new media world while often not being of it. We must use every licit tool we can in a way that attracts without being seduced by the desire to merely attract.
Our candidates must be presidential even when the citizens are being slavish to silliness. We can treat silliness as silly . . . but always look for the hopeful “teaching moment” in the silliness. If a questioner asks a question in a snowman suit, we need not remark on it, but try to find a serious point in their silliness. If there is none (that we can find), it is fair to say, “That was not useful to understanding the state of the country . . . ” and move on.
There is a difference between letting others be silly (it is a free country and we are not so snobbish to assume that we are always right about what is silly) and participating in it. It was not wrong for Bill Clinton to be asked “boxers or briefs” or to appear where people might ask. It was wrong to answer a question that by nature destroyed dignity.
Of course, candidates need not go where they will be ambushed if they don’t wish to do so. But I must say, as long as no editing is allowed and the unedited version of what I said was always available (as it will be in the Internet world) that I would do it if I were (God happily forbids!) running for President.
YouTube is just a new way to distribute information after all. It is the “wild West” days of that development and the rules are still being made . . . as they were in Hollywood for movies in the 1920’s, in radio, in television, and eventually in talk-radio. Right now there is an aspect of “YouTubishness” (a YouTube way of being) that is not healthy for the Republic, but that is the down side of liberty.
Many folk are discovering that they can do something in video, release it, and people will watch it. They doesn’t mean they should or that it will be good for them in the long term. Sensible personal rules will soon be developed about when society will accept in terms of the new media, but we are not there yet.
One can use the medium (as Romney demonstrates daily in his YouTube video releases) without this churlish behavior.
Mitt Romney (to give but one example) has dignity. He will exude it as others lose theirs. He cannot lose in such a situation . . . since in the age of editing and silliness his foes will put hundreds of misleading virus videos out there anyway. People are growing wise to this . . . and the unfiltered video (on You Tube) of the whole debate will be there to rebut the rubbish.
In short, assuming the “screeners” are ideologically balanced, I think all Presidential candidates should be all over the new media . . . and educate people by their manner, tone, and content.
Debate on YouTube? Of course. Debate “YouTubishly?” Never.