Why? Because we like you!
by John Hedgecoth

On the old Mickey Mouse Club show, which I know only from cable reruns in the 70s, the Mouseketeers spelled out Mickey's name to close each episode, and rhymed out the letter "Y" with, "Why, because we like you!" Thus was created the original feelgood tagline, perfect for boosting the self-esteem of the impressionable young viewer and perfect for hooking kids into the show by creating an emotional investment, however fleeting.

I don't know whether Mickey still shows up on some late-night cable feed. I do know that the feelgood emotional connection produced by the television is alive and well, and being served up in powerful doses that hook Americans in ways we don't have time to stop and analyze. Of course Barney borrows shamelessly from the original Disney masters, one-upping Mickey to make kids believe he "loves" them at the end of his show. (This is actually a good primer for kids growing up as they try to decipher the meaning of that word, love, as it is used on daytime TV and on the radio).

More important in terms of impact on the nation's well being is the way the emotive connection affects our political process - a process we'd prefer to think of as deliberate, rational and derived from values held deep within our collective psyche. Sorry. Truth is, the politics of feeling rules. A couple of our cultural assumptions are dead wrong. Television is no longer a "cool" medium, and fear is not a more powerful motivator than love.

GOP strategist-hero Lee Atwater knew the power of fear as a voter-motivator in the 80s when he tapped into a virulent strain of feeling to find Willie Horton and the "wedge," breaking up Americans based on the powerful emotive reaction of fear - in that instance a fear of "other" based on racist stereotypes.

This kind of strategy will work when there is no other countervailing emotion. Remember, 1988 was what we would now call a "Seinfeld" election, it was about nothing. Fear is a sort of default for voters - "I'll vote for that person because I know things won't get any worse . . ." It's the lesser of two evils analysis. It's probably prevalent in more races than candidates would like to admit.

However, as motivating as fear can be, the events of 1998 have taught us that an emotive bond based on compassion, empathy and redemption is, while more difficult to fashion, nearly impossible to break. Bill Clinton keeps gnawing his way out of political traps because he has formed such a bond with the people he governs. This will be the enduring truth of the 90s in American politics: "Sure Clinton was a jerk, but people liked him and he kept the trains running on time."

The above paragraph, if properly accepted in public debate, would put several hundred professsional pundits out of business and a number of cable shows off the air. (Geraldo Rivera, obviously, does not enjoy a Barney-type emotive connection with his viewers.) There is no need for further analysis.

People got to know Bill Clinton - hoarse throated, bulging from the road food - through television pictures of speeches made and hands shaken as the Clinton/Gore buses wended their way across the country in the summer of 1992. People decided they liked him. He reinforces that emotive connection at every opportunity and people continue to respond. It is the emotive power of Clinton's warmth - projected through the allegedly cool medium of television - that created the bond with his viewer-voters. He felt our pain, after all. That bond isn't going away anytime soon.

If viewers were to dicover that Barney smokes unfiltered Camels or that Mickey actually pioneered the use of the microdots that sometimes bear his likeness, would that diminish the emotive power of the show for viewers the next time the show comes on? Maybe a little, but not enough for us to turn it off.

Mickey/Barney/Bill Clinton. It's not that complicated. People will back Bill Clinton even as the impeachment process drags along. Why? Because, Mr. President, we like you. Perhaps there is political lesson here worth learning.

John Hedgecoth is an attorney and activist who spent two years as an Iowa newspaper reporter, a year staffing a Democratic congressional candidate and two years as a clerk to federal drug prosecutors, thus becoming qualified to blather on about nearly anything. He practices law in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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