Part of the magic of yesterday’s 90-minute real-time conversation with the Republicans in Baltimore was the spontaneous rise of attention. Within minutes, Twitter is abuzz. Everyone is transfixed. Everyone. It was some of the best political theater I’ve seen, ever. I call it theater because all of the drama, timing, dialogue and personalities were there, but it was more than that. This was a substantive discussion between the President and representatives of the minority party about far more than policy. Policy was the foundation for a far more meaningful exchange about personal conduct in public discourse.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell has a wonderful post over at the Nation illuminating the dynamic in play:
During the years that I was on faculty at the University of Chicago, my graduate students in political science often took courses with Professor Obama. They universally reported that he was a fair, but exceedingly tough practitioner of the Socratic method. He was willing to entertain any idea, question or observation, no matter how outrageous. But he always subjected the students to a series of logical interventions and arguments that often left students exhausted and sometimes a bit embarrassed. They quickly learned to challenge Professor Obama only if they had fully considered the implications of their arguments and prepared significant evidence in support of their case.
That Barack Obama showed up today. The President put on a clinic in public discourse, political argument, intellectual dexterity and moral courage. It was a reminder of what democracy could be if we engaged our opponents with substance, patience and civility rather than invectives, gamesmanship and boorishness.
Indeed, he did. That certainly explains the President’s demeanor, mastery of the facts, and control of the conversation, but there was more to it, something that takes hold only if you watch the entire exchange start to finish without listening to any analysis or external noise.
In the absence of commentary, an astonishing energy emerged — the energy of independent thought without a scripted response. Nearly every instance where the President appears on television is preceded and followed by someone telling us what to think, what he should do, what he’s expected to say, and how we’re expected to react to it. The spontaneity of this exchange shifted the dynamic in real time so the only voices in the room were the President’s and the person asking the question. No quarterbacking. No pre-conceived notion of how he would answer the question. No teleprompters. Just people having a straightforward debate about important things, like national debt, health care reform, financial reform, and the unbearable din of rhetorical shrieking that inhabits our daily discourse.
Synergy. Real-time connection.
Fellow Newsgang cohort and friend Cliff Gerrish wrote this one year and 8 days ago on Inauguration Day, dubbing the President “Microcaster in Chief“:
Obama relied on the strong connections of the small group instead of the weak connections created by mass media. Small world theory was writ large. And it’s an approach that will move naturally from the campaign to governing.
…
When a great player improvises he’s not making things up out of thin air. He knows the scales, the changes, the modes, the melody, the rhythm and the audience. And from those raw materials he makes something both familiar and new.
When we were doing News Gang Live, Steve Gillmor tried more than once to explain what he meant by the “fifth guy”, the unseen Firesign Theatre writer who only shows up when the other four are in the room:
All the Firesigns agree, however, that a mysterious synergy took place whenever the four of them got together. “It’s like, suddenly there is this fifth guy that actually does the writing,” Austin says. “We all vaguely sort of know him, and a lot of the time take credit for him.”
Cliff, in his usual ahead-of-me-by-light-years fashion, wrote this:
Layering the digital on top of the digital, mashing up a new media venue reveals a real time moment that has an originality at the point of contact. Live radio broadcast over the real time web creates a moment of danger, imperfection and improvisation. I’m not talking about commercial radio stuffed down another channel, but the kind of stuff that is emerging from micro-communities within the social web.
Cliff wrote that piece when NewsGang Live was an audio-only show. The Baltimore episode brought video into the mashup, broadcast it across multi-band airwaves– the Internet, broadcast TV, cable channels, and mobile broadcast (via CNN’s live feed)– creating originality at the point of contact, and a one-time collectively-experienced opportunity to step into the shoes of the fifth guy, no matter our party affiliation, no matter our politics.
Over the politics, there was another lesson: To hear what the fifth guy is saying, tune out the commentary, be part of the performance.
