2016: The Mini Series

Pretend for a moment that voters are not paying close attention and are easily manipulated.   Further pretend they are watching TV.   What would they watch?

We like watching interesting characters, especially interesting jerks.

Today's post will be brief.  I am traveling and have limited access to the internet.

I am indebted to Steve Greenleaf, an author of a series of excellent detective genre novels, as well as a lighthearted novel about divorce, The Ditto List.   It nearly got made into a major motion picture--but didn't, which is why almost no one has heard of it, alas.  Had it been created it would have been seen as the successor to "Kramer vs. Kramer" and it would have been considered the better picture.    

I mention this as a plug for Steve Greenleaf but also explanation for why I have been reading books with titles like How to Write a Screenplay.   Advice for a movie or TV Show:   Have interesting characters and put them into dangerous situations where their own character flaws get them into trouble.   Then, using the tools and characteristics of those very flaws, get them out of trouble.

The books reminded me of something obvious, which I will again note is the hardest thing to notice. This election is a TV show and Trump deserves better ratings than Hillary.    The writers have given him a more interesting character to play.

So let's think of this election the way we might think of a TV show, because that is what it is.

Viewers like flawed characters.   I have been binge watching The Sopranos.   I binge watched Breaking Bad and Mad Men.  I enjoy the current TV drama The Americans, about deep undercover Russian spies in 1980s US.   I watched "The Good Wife", whose title character went from sweet victim to complex flawed survivor.   I don't myself watch "House", but I know enough to know the title character is an interesting jerk.  

Some readers will be the right age to have watched Felicity.   Sweet Felicity, played by Bambi-like good girl Keri Russell, is in a 4 year long love triangle, attracted to ernest good-boy Noah and slightly-bad-boy Ben.   Both are buff good looking guys; she chooses the slightly bad boy.   (Possibly after that first marriage to the bad boy falls apart and the girl has 2 kids and debts and stretch marks she will be interested in the good boy in her second marriage, but that is for later.)

Trump's bad boy character is right out there in front, calling Mexicans rapists, accusing Ted Cruz's father of being in a conspiracy, Obama to be a Kenyan, and so on.   Hillary is the nicey-nicey good girl in public.   I realize that Hillary, too, has an aura of shady secrets (having murdered Vince Foster, enabled her husbands rapes, being a lesbian, sold her soul to Goldman Sachs, subverted the US in order to get donations for the Clinton Foundation, and slept through the killing of Americans in Benghazi, to list just a few of the offenses she is charged with.)    But the public Hillary is "the good girl" and these charges are made to destroy that image while Hillary keeps attempting to hold to her public good girl character.   I am good, I am pure, Hillary says.  Don't believe them when they say I am corrupt.  I am "fighting for us", right like it says on the poster, she asserts.   

Trump embraces being a bad boy character.   Hillary resists being called a bad girl who cynically manipulates the system.  Trump can double down when accused of being outrageous because he is affirming his character--the outrageous bad boy fighting for us.   Hillary had to deny the charge because her character is the earnest good girl and earnest good girls don't murder friends and commit treason and the other things she is accused of.

Destroy her "character"

Observing this as a TV series helps clarify the strategy for each side.    Hillary's team needs to show that Trump is, indeed, bad, a fraud, because he is fighting for himself, not the American people, which is why the Trump University attack works.  It affirms his behavior but undermines his motives.   Trump needs to destroy Hillary's character by demonstrating that she is the fraud, Crooked Hillary rather than nice girl Hillary.

Could the Hillary character reverse direction and admit that she is, indeed, the very knowledgeable cynical practitioner of big league politics?   Not anymore.   Bernie Sanders eliminated that route by defining it as corrupt rather than smart, as a sign of sell-out rather than practical LBJ-type hardball politics.   Hillary has to stay in the character that doesn't particularly fit her: innocent good girl.    Which is why dark black and white photos of Hillary looking sneaky are the heart of the GOP attack on her.