Power Game by Hedrick Smith

Author:Hedrick Smith [Smith, Hedrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82957-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

12. The Image Game: Scripting the Video Presidency

That’s what it comes down to: We are marketing; we are trying to mold public opinion by marketing strategies. That’s what communications is all about.

—William Henkel, Reagan White House chief advance man

The annual spring dinner of the Gridiron Club, an elitist social club of sixty print journalists, is one of the high tribal rites of Washington insiders. It is a gathering of political celebrities that combines snob appeal with Hollywood glitter. The Gridiron dinner brings together six hundred of the most powerful, best-known people in America in an evening of poking fun. Every president since Benjamin Harrison has come to the Gridiron Club dinner at least once. To less exalted politicians, an invitation to the Gridiron banquet is coveted as a mark of making it. The occasion always draws a sidewalk crowd, as limousines deposit the high and mighty in white tie and tails and evening gowns at the Capitol Hilton hotel. Inside, the red-jacketed Marine band stirs a throb of patriotism with Sousa marches. Spotlights play over long tables, festooned with red roses, picking out Hollywood stars rubbing elbows with the captains of industry, the anchors of television, the publishers and other princes of the print press, the deans of the diplomatic corps, the elders of the Supreme Court, the movers and shakers of Congress, and the ranking echelons of the current administration.

For more than a century, the Gridiron has roasted the nation’s leaders with vaudeville skits. By tradition, one politician from each party gets the right of reply: Geraldine Ferraro after the 1984 Democratic defeat, Bob Dole after the Republican loss in 1976. The president is always given the last word and receives a toast. Lyndon Johnson, who took heavy flak in his final years, once groused earthily that the Gridiron dinner was “about as much fun as throwing cowshit at the village idiot.” More deftly, Ronald Reagan—who thrived on the by-play—called it “the most elegant lynching I have ever seen.”

But Reagan got off his own sallies, year after year, especially at the 1984 dinner. Eyeing potential Democratic rivals, Reagan ruled out Gary Hart with the quip that “the country won’t want a president who looks like a movie star.” As for Alan Cranston, then a bald sixty-nine-year-old, he said: “Imagine running for president at his age! He won’t have the problem I had—the press won’t be bugging him, does he dye his hair?”

For some politicians, the Gridiron has been a priceless forum for reshaping their images and reputations by showing a human side, an ability to laugh at themselves, which is the principal formula of success at the dinner. After his “hatchet man” role as the vice-presidential nominee in 1976, Bob Dole turned a new leaf at the Gridiron by ruefully joking that the person wounded most by his razor tongue “was me.” Senator Edward Kennedy, whose 1980 presidential hopes were badly damaged by his fumbling television interview with NBC’s Roger Mudd, brought down the house in 1986 with his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.