In the world of politics, novelty wins. This is not surprising. Increasingly, we live in the shadow of the new thing, the fresh face and the Google Trend.
I was struck again, watching a recent press conference, by the remarkable ascent President Barack Obama has made. He first crossed the national stage as an unknown in 2004. Five years later, he is likely the most recognizable man in the world, and given the growth of technology that has taken place since his election, he is quite possibly recognizable by more people than any figure in human history.
And that might be bad news for him.
If this seems unlikely, consider: more American households have a high definition television set than don’t, according to a recent report from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.
High definition television (HDTV), unlike standard definition television, emphasizes blemishes and imperfections. Age shows, and it shows quickly. The president is 48, as of last week. By the time he runs for re-election, he’ll be 51. Should he win, after two terms, he’d be 55. Even today, there are noticeable gray hairs that weren’t there in Iowa last January.
Remember how President George W. Bush aged while in office? Now imagine that, but in HD. If in 2008 President Obama was the fresh face, by 2012 he’ll have been a ubiquitous presence on our high definition TVs for five years. He’ll look and sound much older, and who’s to say his eventual challenger might not look new and exciting by comparison?
High definition television is not the president’s only problem. Our shortened cultural attention span poses unique problems as well.
Nicholas Carr has done yeoman’s work on this subject. His seminal Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” did for the attention span what Nietzsche tried to do for God—eulogized it with a catchy phrase.
While Carr bemoans the forces that create this societal ADHD, like many, he understands the answer is not so simple as some Neo-Luddite Great Unplugging. What writer Cory Doctorow calls the “outboard brain” is unquestionably making knowledge more accessible, more complete and more relevant—in short, we know more than we’ve ever known.
A recent piece by Emily Yoffe of Slate.com points to research that argues that our brains are wired to seek information, and clicking on an internet link to new information sends the chemical dopamine to the same systems that control pleasure and desire. In a very real way, we crave the novelty of the next link and the next reward cue more than ever.
Come the next election cycle, what will that constant search for new information settle on? Is it likely that Obama will still feel like the new thing, even after four years of prime time press conferences, All-Star game appearances and HD town halls? More to the point, how much longer will Obama carry that thrill of excitement and novelty?
Like the famous Nixon-Kennedy debates, the Obama-McCain presidential race now feels like a harbinger of a new political age. But the potential change to our society that the abandonment of long-form reading and thinking poses, goes far beyond politics and to the very center of the way we think.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the same forces that thrust Obama into the pinnacle of public notoriety were his political undoing?
Will Munsil is a first year law student. Reach him at wmunsil@asu.edu.
