The final debate concluded, most Americans will stop paying attention to public rhetoric until the next President offers up an Inaugural Address.  So it’s a great moment to pause and consider the overall state of the public discourse, the media, and storytelling.  Where have we landed after the campaign and the 3 debates?  What are the lessons?

1.  Does consistency matter?  Governor Romney offered one set of policy prescriptions during the primary season, another on the campaign trail talking to partisan crowds, and a third, more moderate set of views during the debates.  We won’t know until November 5th whether consistency matters anymore, but it is surprising that, in this era of always-on, the Romney team has been so open about their ‘etch-a-sketch’ approach to messaging.  Perhaps they’ve figured out something I haven’t.  But my take is that sticky principles still matter to most people.  Of course, people may change their views with time.  But not that much that fast, if you want to be taken seriously as a thinker.  We’ll see what the voters think in a couple of weeks.  

2.  There’s a difference between (media) narratives and storytelling.  Partisans of both parties complain – rightly – about the media narratives that get stuck to their candidates.  Romney is an elite member of the super-rich, out of touch with ordinary people.  Obama is aloof – or out of his depth – and doesn’t know how to get his hands dirty in legislation.

Fair or not, these narratives adhere to candidates and politicians because of the way the media thinks of storytelling:  that it’s about simple, black and white conflicts.  So they take an incident, like Romney’s famous ’47 percent’ comment, and bounce it off what they know about the person – Romney is very wealthy – and the candidate’s obvious desire to connect with as many people as possible, and voila! – conflict.  Or Obama is a one-term Senator, and the health-care bill took a year to get through Congress, and voila! – he’s aloof. 

It’s important to understand that there’s more to storytelling than conflict.  Every story needs conflict, to be sure, but conflict doesn’t mean that you have a real story.  As I’ve blogged about before, many times, great storytelling draws on one of the fundamental stories in our culture (the Quest, Stranger in a Strange Land, Love Story, Revenge, Rags to Riches) and puts new characters and situations into one of those deeply familiar story structures. 

That’s not what the press is doing.  The press is serving up conflict, not storytelling, which is why it both catches our attention and fails to satisfy us.  The great press barons of the early 20th century understood the deeper need, and offered up real stories that they often paid for or manufactured in order to hook their readers.  Stanley’s search for Dr. Livingstone was one such story – and a great Quest.  It was bought and paid for by James Bennett of the New York Herald, and kept readers coming to that paper for the 9 months it took Stanley to find Livingstone.

3.  Neither candidate succeeded in telling us a real story; hence the lack of daylight between them.  Politicians and the experts that surround them are smart about polling and messaging, but stupid about storytelling, at least lately.  Candidate Reagan offered us a Quest, and people responded with landslide voting.  Before that, Kennedy, FDR, and Lincoln are remembered precisely because they told one of the great stories to the American people.  Most of the other presidents are left behind in the pantheon of heroes because they lacked that kind of vision and storytelling prowess. 

I’ve offered up in earlier blogs the stories that Obama and Romney had the opportunity to tell the American people.  But neither candidate has taken the hint, and the polls have the 2 men tied right now at 47 percent each.  Hmmmm.