Showtime!

The Magic of Proximity: Winston Peters' under-the-radar rallies are currently attracting hundreds, by November he'll be addressing thousands. News media, or no news media, it's showtime!

IS IT POSSIBLE to win an election without the support of the news media? Most political scientists would say: ‘No.’ They’d point out that contemporary society is so saturated with communications media of every kind that any attempt to escape its influence is doomed to fail. A politician can no more do without the news media than a fish can do without water.

I’m not so sure. Media saturation is not an unambiguously positive thing. If it were, our loved ones could leave us and not be missed.

Through the marvels of Facebook, Twitter and Skype; through instant phone-calls, texts and e-mails; and although thousands of kilometres may separate sender from receiver; personal contact need never be lost. Before you’ve so much as unpacked your suitcases, technology allows your family back in New Zealand to enjoy the view from your London hotel-room. Twitter lets your friends know what you’re having for breakfast long before you’ve finished that bowl of cereal.

But, it’s just not the same as being there.

And what is true of the new social media is also true of the news media. Concision – as every "Tweeter" understands – comes at a cost.

A ten-second television sound-bite cannot do justice to a forty-minute speech. And unless you’re Abraham Lincoln or Ernest Hemingway, it’s extremely difficult to do justice to a political experience in less than 350 words.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of the revolution in communications technology that even as it multiplies the means of individual expression, it reduces the editorial resources available for collective enlightenment. The concentrated advertising revenues of the past, which had made investigative journalism a viable economic proposition, are now spread much more thinly across a multitude of competing media "platforms". This makes it much harder for the news media to perform its crucial democratic duties.

Politicians are rapidly adapting themselves to these new realities – most significantly by shortening and simplifying their communications with the voters. But, as any student who’s ever relied on Cole’s Notes to get them through an English examination knows to their cost, reading the summary of a novel is no substitute for reading the novel itself. And while Twitter’s 140-character limitation enforces simple political messages, it can just as easily make a politician sound simple-minded.

I suspect the reason so many people turn away from modern politicians has a lot to do with their almost total reliance on the news media to convey their party’s political messages. This dependency on cash-strapped and understaffed newspapers and networks makes it virtually impossible to say anything requiring a generous allocation of either time or column-centimetres. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it doesn’t make for a very well-informed electorate.

Nor is it a substitute for the sort of face-to-face connection that makes close personal relationships so indispensable to our happiness. Catching brief glimpses of our politicians on the six o’clock news, or reading occasional snippets of policy in the morning papers, is no more satisfying than receiving e-mail or text-messages from an absent spouse. All that’s conveyed, emotionally, is the reality of our separation.

If, as Aristotle insisted, Man is a "political animal", the solution to energising the electorate is not to be found in the techniques of marketing. Political parties cannot be "re-branded" or "re-framed" into popularity. In politics – as in music – nothing beats the live performance.

It is only in the political meeting that the innate human desire to participate in the articulation and reaffirmation of social and cultural meaning can take place. Only in the visceral connection between the person on the stage and the people on the floor are lasting political allegiances forged.

The printed word cannot adequately convey this relationship, and even live radio and television broadcasts carry but a little of its extraordinary power. Indeed, the only reliable vessel for its communication is the eye-witness. It is in the face-to-face report, the passionate personal endorsement, that the seeds of conviction take root and grow. As any advertising guru will tell you: "Nothing beats word-of-mouth."

Rob Muldoon understood this, and so did Bob Jones. David Lange’s soaring rhetoric charmed even his enemies. Helen Clark and John Key, by no means great orators, nevertheless understood the critical importance of putting themselves in front of flesh-and-blood human-beings; making the all-important connections; and then allowing their converts to spread the word.

In this election year, however, it will be Winston Peters who makes the best use of the political meeting. His below-the-radar rallies already attract hundreds. By November he’ll be addressing thousands.

Pundits shake their heads at NZ First’s rising popularity – but they simply don’t understand the magic that’s unleashed when the electorate’s inchoate yearnings become emotionally connected to a politician capable of giving them voice.

At such moments – news media or no news media – it’s showtime!

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 11 January 2011.