How's the election been for you? On a scale of one to 10? Great? Just OK? Would you recommend it to a friend? Not to trivialize the historical crossroads at which we find ourselves, still less the opportunity for a frank and rigorous exchange of ideas over the best policy with which to lead this great republic into the 21st century, but: have you had fun? Did it suck? Were you on the edge of your seat? Or was it a complete waste of your TiVo?
That America's political machine is an ever-growing subsidiary of its entertainment industry has long been remarked upon. "All campaigns are movies now, consisting of competing narratives with competing stars," wrote Neal Gabler in his superb 1998 book Life: The Movie, a radical expansion of Norman Mailer's famous comment, in his 1960 Esquire essay, Superman Comes to the Supermarket, that "America's politics would now be also America's favorite movie."
Whether it be Kennedy tapping into what Mailer called America's "subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely romantic desires", or Nixon yucking it up on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, Reagan mashing up one-liners from old b-movies in his off-the-cuff remarks to the press, or Bill Clinton blowing his sax on the Arsenio Hall Show, presidents have long realized their responsibilities as America's "entertainer-in-chief," to use Kurt Anderson's term.
Or as Obama said in an interview with CBS News a few months ago: "The mistake of my first term – couple of years – was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that's important but the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."
In other words: he failed to construct an appealing and easily understood narrative around his achievements. He failed to make the public feel as if he had advanced America's plot.
It's a curious omission given that one of Obama's greatest strengths is his gifts as a storyteller. It was how he first came to us, fashioning his own myth from the bare material of his life in Dreams of My Father.
"It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all of the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela," he wrote, only to be confronted with the truth of his father's decline. "All my life, I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!"
Much the same prism of projections would fan out around Obama as a political candidate, as he was himself sometimes uncomfortably aware. "I am like a Rorschach test," he told the New York Times in 2008, "Even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something." In other words, Obama would succeed to the precise degree that he managed to replicate the same mixture of longing and long-distance charisma that his father once inspired in him.
There's another word for that mixture: it's called "fame". As Neal Gabler noted at the time:—
Above all, Obama has something else that all great stars have – he embodies a theme. Every great star is a walking idea. James Cagney demonstrated the power of sheer energy early in his career, and the way that energy could curdle later in his career. Cary Grant demonstrated the force of charm and quick-wittedness. Paul Newman demonstrated the limitations of self-interest and the redemption that comes with engagement outside oneself. Robert Redford demonstrated the deception of appearances. Barbra Streisand, in the immortal words of critic Pauline Kael, demonstrated that talent was beauty. That is what made these individuals stars
The 2008 election was as vividly plotted as an episode of the West Wing, with the added advantage that it was all playing out in real time, with new twists and developments every day, each ramping up the difficulty levels like a video game: the slaying of Hillary the dragon so nail-biting a drama you almost forgot that it was just the warm up for the confrontation with McCain.
Not since Ripley blasted off from LV426 in Aliens only to find herself in the ring with the alien queen, have we been subject to a series of climaxes so cunningly staggered. That Obama finally took to the stage in Chicago to the sound of Trevor Rabin's almost illegally rousing score for the 2000 football-training drama Remember the Titans only went to show: ever now and again, given the right concatenation of inner character and circumstance, life serves up a happy ending worthy of a Denzel Washington movie.
The first act of what followed was terrific, even if the genre was slightly unexpected, given the historical circumstances: comedy. Whether riffing on the White House as the perfect "home office", or goofily wide-eyed with his first flight on Air Force One, or sparring with McCain over the budget for a new fleet of presidential helicopters ("The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me"), Obama seemed to be channeling every ordinary Joe thrust into a fictional Oval office, from Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington to Kevin Kline in Dave.
As Jon Stewart quipped, upon hearing the news that Obama had gotten Earth Wind and Fire to play at a White House party: "Obama is actually doing the thing everyone says they would if they became president. 'If I become president I'm going have my favorite band play, and they're gonna play in the living room, like every day.'"
Then came the mid-terms. Traditionally the Second Act Complication brings the villain into play but in truth the Republican freshmen who took up their position in congress were not your typical not Vaudevillian villains, twirling their moustaches. Rather, with an obstructionist agenda that came close at times to outright nihilism, they were less, they more closely resembled Brechtian saboteurs, intent on breaking the fourth wall, bringing the entire performance to a shattering silence in which the audience looks at one another, nervily: what now?
If the Clinton movie was baby-boomer nostalgia trip which descended into gluey sexual farce (The Big Chill meets Nine to Five) and the Bush presidency, like the second installment of all long-running franchises, a terrifying lurch over to the dark side (Superman 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), then Obama's presidency soon resembled something out of the theatre of the absurd: an Beckettian anti-drama in which no is yes and up is down, designed to send the audience staggering out into the night, having been forcibly divested of their petit-bourgeois assumption that this or any drama should ever make sense.
Anyone for a sequel? The biggest obstacle to a second Obama term, as with all sequels, is the removal of the asymmetry which made the hero's struggle so diverting in the first place. David has become his own Goliath. The kid who took on the Death Star is now a Jedi knight spouting Chinese-cracker bromides, and to be frank Princess Leia always preferred Han Solo anyway.
"You know, I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention," said Obama when he accepted the Democratic nomination earlier this year. "Times have changed, and so have I. I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president."
Some commentators took this for an Aaron Sorkin moment, akin to Michael Douglas's alpha-dog assertion of rank in The American President ("My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I am the president"), but he put the emphasis on a different syllable, sounding a more rueful note.
Obama sounded like a man who knows his magic has partly evaporated, not as a consequence of anything he has said or done, but simply because he has ceased to be a projection of our desires. He has ceased to be fictional, and become real in front of our eyes.
The good news for Democrats is that the same cannot be said of Romney. He has the looks of a president: the hair, now sporting attractive streaks of grey, the bone structure, the chin all seem the attributes of someone dreamt up by someone in central casting to appeal to our idea of what a commander-in-chief should look like — a CGI president, stranded in what animators call 'uncanny valley'.
The rapid blink rate, the sunken eyes, the quick gulps, the nervous laugh, the over-concentration on whatever business is to hand: Romney has the unfailing sincerity of a bad actor. You have to go back to the old daytime soaps to find the furry unfamiliarity with which his mouth handles the word "care". He says it like he's removing a peach stone: when everyone's back is turned he'll drop it into the nearest plant pot.
America is a nation of storytellers. It was founded on a David and Goliath narrative which every school kid can recite and which informs everything from the up-and-at-em urgency of its cinema, to the rags-to-riches narratives of its businesses, to the narratives of personal salvation fashioned by and for Oprah.
Leave dramatic longeurs to the French, long form to the Russians and pauses to the British. Americans like to know what happens next. That the same dynamic also drives its politics should come as a surprise, and give those in the Obama camp cause for optimism.
The country doesn't feel done with their candidate yet. The story feels only half done. We want to see how this one turns out.
