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WASHINGTON (AP) – Calvin Coolidge, nicknamed by some “Silent Cal” during his time in the White House, used his autobiography lives up to its nickname. “The words of a president,” he wrote in 1929 after leaving office, “carry enormous weight and should not be used indiscriminately”.
The world is very different now. Communication is instant. Americans – even a president – are often measured by the amount and volume of what is now called their “content.” Since taking office in 2017 (and for many years before that), Donald Trump has been a different type of president when it comes to communications – a more-is-better type.
You can worship Trump or despise him. But from storms of late night tweets to oft-repeated untruths to provocative statements about everything from the kneeling of professional football players with canned beans to buy Greenland, There is one thing that has been nearly impossible to do with the President of the United States over the past four years: ignore him.
“No one can escape it. This has never happened before. I’ve always cared about the president, but it’s never been like this, ”says Syd Straw, an artist and an artist who lives in the woods of Vermont. “Even the people who love him feel that way, I think.
Now, as another administration prepares to take the reins of American power, have the Trump years forever changed the place of the presidency in American life and in the lives of Americans? At Calvin Coolidge’s statement that has become woefully outdated in the era of the ubiquitous presidency, or is it an idea whose time has come, as a sign on the Lafayette Square fence near the White House put it last week: “Enough!
The presidency was conceived as a combination of two things: a leading leader and an ordinary person from our ranks. And the American people have always wanted to interact with it, or at least feel it. In the 1800s, they actually were: Andrew Jackson’s grand opening featured an open house. in which people walked in and out of the White House at will. Access to varying degrees continued for half a century until security concerns ended.
Kennedy administration for television personality raised to a height almost at the same level as competence. And the office’s stature – perched high on a metaphorical hill, from the people but distant from them – has since rivaled the desire to bring it back to Earth. So Bill Clinton answered the famous 1994 question on MTV – “Boxers or briefs?” – and George W. Bush is growing in stature as a candidate you “want to sit down and have a beer” with.
But none of these leaders communicated directly with the American public and injected new material on several topics into the national conversation several times a day. There is simply no precedent for Donald Trump, who – like many of us – hid in his bedroom late at night with his phone and tweeted about things that irritated him. Never before have 280 characters of the most powerful person on the planet seemed so close. Maybe they never will.
Former President Barack Obama even deployed Trump’s ubiquity as a talking point while letting down Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“Joe and Kamala, when they’re in power… you won’t have to think about them every day,” Obama said at a drive-through rally. in Orlando, Florida in late October. “It just won’t be that exhausting. You can live your life. “
Many Trump supporters, begging to differ, loved this ubiquity. For them, it’s transparency: he brought to the presidency a combination of accessibility and pugnacity that floods multiple channels – and is useful even when it’s draining, which is sometimes even for them. “Even Trump’s supporters are tired of his daily drama,” the conservative National Review said in a headline. Last year.
Put simply, this is another data point in a saga of national exhaustion and media overload – especially in the era of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If we are exhausted by the presidency, how are we going to move forward in terms of media consumption?” asks Apryl Alexander, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Denver who studies how people and communities cope with challenges. “I have a text from friends as soon as I wake up about something (Trump) said. I think Biden and his camp are going to have to navigate it.
In many ways, it transcends Trump. The primacy of the presidency is so deeply rooted in American culture that it is often difficult to look away when the occupier says, “Look at me.”
Although the US government has three branches, the chief executive has come to embody the national psyche, national mood, national character. It is difficult to give a legislative body or a tribunal the personality of a nation. The President, however, should channel all of that – and so, in a society weaned from heroes and oversized personalities, draws attention.
“We’re not looking at the office; we look at the person. And Donald Trump was the ultimate personality, ”says Anthony DiMaggio, a political scientist at Lehigh University who teaches media policy and propaganda. “This is not the best way to have a nuanced understanding of our political system. But it is easy.
Who knows how a President Joe Biden will communicate? It’s probably safe to say that its lack of history as a reality TV staple and oft-provocative tweeting can limit the amount of national bandwidth it will pursue at any given moment.
What about Trump? When he and the presidency become separate entities, he will continue to occupy what sociologists call “the space of attention.” He will still have a lot to say, and many places to say it, and a lot of people who want to hear him. But unlike now, when he holds the highest office in the country, more Americans will feel they can shut it down.
“What he says can continue to be relevant for quite a long time,” says Caroline Lee, associate professor at Lafayette University in Pennsylvania, specializing in the sociology of politics and culture. “But the question is, at some point he will die, and who takes over his attention space at this point?” Could someone command this style of attention or so much attention? It’s hard to imagine anyone playing this role.
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Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for The Associated Press, has written about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted
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