Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/071392/0713640.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 125 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 84

Ross Perot and the Call-In Presidency


Charles Krauthammer


    It is conventional usage to refer to Ross Perot as a
third-party candidate. In fact, he is nothing of the sort.
Unlike the classic third-party candidates -- say, Strom Thurmond
and Henry Wallace, who in 1948 formed right- and left-wing
offshoots of a real political party (the Democrats) -- Perot
represents no party. He does not even pretend to.

    Perot is a one-man band. The fact that one man alone could
have had such a meteoric rise begs explanation. Yes, the
country is disgusted with Washington gridlock. Yes, both parties
have put up maddening mediocrities. Yes, America lionizes
tycoons and is occasionally seized with the belief that they --
Henry Ford, assorted Rockefellers, most recently Lee Iacocca --
can save the country. And, yes, Perot has $100 million to blow.

    But the Perot phenomenon signifies something larger,
deeper. It signifies a geologic change in American politics: the
growing obsolescence of the great institutions -- the political
parties, the Establishment media, the Congress -- that have
traditionally stood between the governors and the governed. The
traditional way to achieve and wield power in America is to tame
or charm or capture these institutions. Perot's genius was to
realize that for the first time in history, technology makes it
possible to bypass them. Win or lose, knowing or not, Perot is
the harbinger of a new era of direct democracy.

    First Perot bypassed the parties. He has no use for them,
except as foils for his own pristine independence. He deigned
to enter not a single primary, and yet was hailed by exit polls
as the winner of California's.

    As for the media, he realized that the proliferation of
outlets has created a new game: a way to reach the American
people directly, without the mediation of Dan Rather and the New
York Times. The Perot campaign owed much of its amazing start
to its call-in, soft-news-show launch, which allowed it to get
its message out unfiltered.

    And as for Congress, Perot promises to bypass it and go
directly to the American people in the "electronic town hall"
-- Nightline with President Perot playing Ted Koppel. It is
here, says Perot, that the American people will, in direct
communion with the leader, solve those knotty problems that have
eluded a clumsy, corrupt Congress.

    Coming two-way TV technology will one day make it possible
for Perot's town hall to be more than a glorified national talk
show. It could be a place where, as in the original New England
town hall, people don't just talk but vote. For bombing
Baghdad, press 1. For continued sanctions, press 2. For punting
until next week's show, press 3.

    In 1789 the Founders contrived a deliberately cumbersome
political system (elected representatives, separated powers,
bicameral legislature, indirect election of the President) to
make sure that popular passions were filtered before they could
explode into national action. Over the next two centuries, party
and press evolved as additional filters between rulers and
ruled. Now, announces the Perot phenomenon, these filters face
technological obsolescence.

    Take the parties. They arose in the 19th century as a
two-way transmission belt. They gathered grass-roots sentiment
and sent it up to the governing elites, who in turn used them
to mobilize an otherwise unreachable mass electorate. A century
ago you needed party rallies and precinct captains to get the
message out. In the age of television and satellites, you don't.

    Little wonder that the parties are moribund, that party
affiliation is so brittle, that congressional candidates are now
political entrepreneurs beholden to no one. The party convention
has become positively quaint. Traditionally it was here that the
elders gathered to pick their presidential candidates. That role
having long since been forfeited to the primaries, the parties
have turned the convention into a made-for-TV show. Perot
understands that this new contraption -- parties manipulating
media to send out the parties' message under cover of "news" --
is Rube Goldberg inefficiency. Why not let one man go on Larry
King and send the message out himself, directly?

    Big Media? The democratization of communications, from CNN
to MTV to C-SPAN, means that these dinosaurs can now be
bypassed. Congress? A fen of stagnant waters, a den of special
interests. To the town hall!

    Of course the electronic town hall, like the other
trappings of direct techno-democracy, is an illusion. A New
England town hall works because the town is small. Real
interaction between people, between governors and governed, is
possible. In a vast continental nation like the U.S., it is not.
Mass electronic communication is really one-way communication,
top-down. For the practiced performer the call-in show is the
most easily manipulated forum.

    It is precisely because direct democracy is such a
manipulatable sham that every two-bit Mussolini adopts it as his
own. Pomp and plebiscites. The Duce and the people. No need for
the messy stuff in between. Not for nothing did the Founders
abhor direct democracy. They knew it to be a highway to tyranny.

    The American experiment has always been an experiment in
democratic indirectness. The people do not get instant
gratification for their political wants. They have them filtered
first. The passing of these filtering institutions may be
inevitable, but it is no cause for celebration. The parties, Big
Media and Congress are, Lord knows, unwieldy, obtrusive and
often offensive. But they're all we've got. Until we find
something else to stand between us and the maximum leader, we
should be loath to throw them away.