RNC gives Trump chance to get his media mojo back
Networks gear for unconventional convention in Cleveland
The Republican National Convention, which starts Monday, is one mix of media, politics and culture that definitely bears watching.
Network news executives, who for years have cut back convention coverage with the excuse that they had become boring pseudo-events, are all coming to Cleveland this year with more resources than ever and expecting that anything could happen — on stage or off.
“This is not your father or grandfather's convention,” said Steve Scully, political editor at C-SPAN, the gavel-to-gavel public affairs channel. “This is something that's going to be completely different, something we're preparing for, but we're preparing for the unexpected. We just don't know how this is all going to unfold.”
Even if the TV production itself turns into reality-TV treacle with members of Trump's family dominating the podium night after night, the convention could still turn out to be one of the most significant political and cultural moments in decades, depending on what tone the mercurial candidate takes and how it plays inside Quicken Loans Arena, on the streets of Cleveland and around the globe.
“Undoubtedly, this is going to be one of the most fascinating conventions we've seen in modern times,” said Sam Feist, Washington bureau chief for CNN.
“Donald Trump is an unconventional candidate, and this campaign has surprised us at every turn. So, we are ready for more surprises,” he added. “If there are protests, we are well prepared. Our teams have been covering protests for years — whether it was Ferguson or Baltimore or those protests over the past few weeks.”
You might have to go back to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 to find another party gathering where the events in the hall and on the street were so unpredictable and connected. Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey had said America would continue its controversial involvement in Vietnam. He was nominated while police bloodied anti-war protesters outside the convention hall.
But that was such a vastly different media environment — essentially a three-network universe with news technology that allowed TV executives to determine what was and was not seen inside and outside the convention. Today, with smartphones and livestreams on Periscope and Facebook, such gatekeeping is a distant memory.
“CNN will send more staffers to this convention than we've ever sent to a convention before,” Feist said. “Some of that is because interest in this election is higher than I've ever seen. The political story is a great story, and our viewers and online readers are plugged into it.”
There is no shortage of compelling story lines.
With the Republican party profoundly divided by Trump's candidacy, Scully sees the future of the party itself possibly hanging in the balance. He compares this gathering to the one that took place in 1976 in Kansas City, when Ronald Reagan and incumbent Jerry Ford battled in an open convention that historians have come to call “riotous.”
“There is such strong dislike in the Never-Trump movement that one factor I'm looking at is those Republicans who are not there,” he said. “The list is pretty significant. The Ohio governor [John Kasich] is not even going to be inside the [arena] or speaking. That speaks volumes to me.”
The absence of traditional party leaders has resulted in a lineup of speakers heavy on Trump family members. And while the nominee promised a prime-time-friendlier slate of A-listers, what he's delivered so far is a lineup with speakers like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who flamed out as presidential candidate before the race had barely started.
The unpromising nature of such offerings underscores the biggest story line of all: Can Trump regain his media mojo in the four days and nights of free wall-to-wall media?
Many seem to have forgotten what a groundbreaking and brilliant media campaign Trump ran starting in June 2015 as he sliced and diced big-spending, dark-money-backed candidates like Walker and Jeb Bush. When the Bush family brought out former President George W. to try and stop Trump in South Carolina, he shredded that Bush, too. And he did it while spending almost no money, while more than $23 million in superPAC attack ads were marshaled against him.
It seemed Trump could do no media wrong as he demanded and received preferential treatment on network and cable shows. Thanks to the ratings he delivered, producers allowed him to call in and control conversations with hosts rather than come into the studio and risk follow-up questions.
Trump seemed freakishly attuned to the transitional media space we now inhabit — between the TV era and helter-skelter of social media. TV is still the strongest media force in American political life, but the internet and social media have changed audience expectations. To be successful on TV today, a candidate has to be as ubiquitous as possible and comfortable in live, improvisational settings.
At times, Trump seemed to be everywhere, talking on multiple cable channels simultaneously. And he looked perfectly at ease in fluid, live, TV situations where he didn't know what was coming next.
But the pinnacle was the voice he sounded on Twitter — perfectly pitched to the aggressive, snarky, often nasty dominant tone of discourse in that medium. Name another 70-year-old who does it better. At the top of his game, Trump was driving entire news cycles across myriad platforms with just one tweet.
And then suddenly, as if the gods decided to take back the great media gifts they had given, Trump lost his media touch.
Maybe it was his occasional use of a Teleprompter starting in March after months of ridiculing opponents for using them. By June, Teleprompter Trump, as some called him at those moments, became an object of ridicule himself. Instead of looking like a jazz musician enjoying the improvisational nature of give-and-take with an interviewer or TV audience, he looked like someone who was trying to dance but couldn't find the beat.
I would offer June 3 as the day Trump lost his media magic. It came during an interview with Jake Tapper when the CNN host refused to let the candidate deflect his questions — questions about Trump's statements that a judge presiding over a case involving the candidate should recuse himself because of his Mexican heritage.
“If you are saying he can't do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?” Tapper asked. Trump said no, but he has never been the same on TV.
The moment reminded me of Joseph Welch, special counsel for the Army, during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, asking the Red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?”
They are very different media eras. But I heard echoes of Welch in Tapper's question and saw the Trump balloon start to deflate.
Trump's media game is not as mighty as it once was, but he still has one.
As a media critic, that's the lens though which I'll be watching the convention this week: Can Trump still work some serious media magic?
But as a citizen, I'll be watching with more worried eyes, hoping that if he does find his TV touch, he doesn't use this gigantic stage to further denigrate ethnic and religious groups and drive a deeper wedge into our troubled nation.
I hope this newly self-anointed “law and order candidate” doesn't use TV and Twitter to try and further inflame all the angst and anger in the land.
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