IIOW TO RECAPTURI: SELECTIVE MEMORIES
103
while convincingly soliciting Hollywood money-it is the political per–
sonality in operation, as it moves from one fictive identity to another.
Considcr what happens
to
political leaders when that ability fails.
Scnator Edmund Muskic's bid
to
bccome the Democratic nominec for
president crashed whcn he broke into tcars on the platform ovcr an
attack upon his wife-he got stllck in a domestic identity unsuitable for
that momcnt. The same was true when, in a presidential debate,
Michael Dukakis was asked if he would change his mind about the
dcath penalty if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered. Whcn he
coolly answered "no," unable
to
move away from a mercly technical
political idcntity, he lost the election.
In confcssing somc of his heroic achievements, Gore has gotten into
trouble because these emerge too unguardedly in thc oldcr fictive rhetor–
ical mode of his father, who did not have to face a media so driven by
the compulsion
to
expose fictions (even as, of course, the mcdia crcatcs
its own concealed fictions).
Both Gorc and Reagan mastered the fictive adaptations necessary to
the political personality. Both have always scemed
to
understand that in
an clectronic age, mastery of newspapers, radio, tclcvision, movics–
adaptation to the camera's gaze-and finally attuncment
to
the Internct,
is essential. fictions offer the route
to
mastcry and leadership dominance.
This political self is like P.
T.
Barnum's circus and museum: if one itcm
does nor please, be patient-another is on its way. What is at stake is not
mora I fidel ity or persona I a uthenticity, but politica I spectaclc, not just
acts but enactments-theater, strategic vision, the truth of effects. When
Gore tells a tale of the transforming origin of his heroic vision, it is truc
beca usc it should be true of the Ma n-Who-Would- Be-President. When
Reagan declares thc Soviet state
to
be an "evil empire," it is true bccause
it must be true.
It
b('Comes
truc. These arc not, nor are thcy meant
to
be,
truth statements; they are pcrformative. They are what Hans Vaihingcr
called "as if" concepts, and Nietzsche tcrmed
ficta-true
becausc we
need them
to
be true, not because we can confirm thcm. Such idcas as
"justice," "equality," or "progress" arc
Ilcta;
in political pcrsons, the
movement from one personality
to
another is a sequcncc of as ifs.
In
pol–
itics, I call
ficta
"spectacles," the creation of nccessary fictions. To be
entirely successful, these fictions l11ust he hidden; Machi:lVclli's axiol11s of
"secming" and "supposing" rather than
I}eing
still hold. But today, mak–
ing "seeming"
seem real
requires close attunement
to
the mcdia.
Reagan grew up with the modern media. AI Gore "created the Inter–
net." He is, Bill Clinton quipped, "the only person ever
to
hold politi–
cal office who kncw what the gestalt of a gigabyte is." (Bush quipped
