The Great Debate

As the banking crisis first unfolded I had occasion to watch a large number of American senators and congress men and women display their media skills. Watching the great debate last night you could see the same skills being transferred across the Atlantic. It’s clear though that British politicians have much to learn before they reach the level of performance demonstrated by the Americans. Why that should be I don’t know, but the difference is there. While the Americans are able to engage the audience directly and have a well integrated use of their arms and backs, the Brits or at least as far as David Cameron and Nick Clegg still look like they have just emerged from media charm school. Of the two Cameron looked like he had integrated his training better but at the moments when he was most fluent, he was focused not on the audience or the viewer but in the mid-distance. It makes for good stage presence but does not directly engage you. Nick Clegg did, by looking wide-eyed into the camera, engaging the viewer personally into a ‘you and I’ relationship. He talked consensually at these points, labelling the other two leaders as men of the past. The whole effect was an invitation to bond and perhaps allowed him to ‘win’ the debate. Gordon Brown on the whole failed to engage people directly, most notably on the question on education where he ignored the questioner and their question to launch into his pre-prepared answer. The one time he captured the audience and the viewer was when he talked about the economy and he engaged people using ‘you and I’ language as he warned about the danger of a double-dip recession. The rest of the time he tended, as did David Cameron at times, to stick to a prepared script heavy with statistics. The eyes glaze over at such points as the viewer and audience are not engaged directly, they are not included but are offered a spectacle from which they are excluded. In the medium of television, as it is evolving, what works is engagement, inclusion, a sense of ‘you and I’ and what we can do together. Cameron in his language is saying this but Clegg is embodying it. Cameron presents himself as a leader at a time when the medium is flattening values,giving power to what the viewer and the audience respond to. Here wee boyishness helps tremendously and Nick Clegg is the winner here, in this, he is the true heir of Tony Blair circa 1997 and he has one final advantage - a certain resemblance in expression to Cliff Richard. A man derided by many, who has sustained a career for over five decades, whose appeal may be hard to fathom but is undoubtedly there, particularly for women – the group pollsters' say will decide the election.