Politics occurs in real time. That means that its procedures and events take place in the time it really takes to accomplish those things. That is different from other procedures and events that take place in vicarious experience, such as drama or movies or history books where time is foreshortened so that people as observers do not have to indulge in seeing everything unfold, cuts made in the film so that a walk in the woods is long enough to provide a sense of what it is like to be in the woods but not the entire time it takes to make the trip while real walks in the woods last so long as it takes to get from one place to another, to cover the distance. Vicarious experiences are allowed to be made more dramatic or presented with symbols and stereotypical characters so as to grasp what is happening in a thrice. But politics is vicarious in that except for a few events actually seen, like JFK as a Presidential candidate visiting the Bronx, politics is seen on television however much the issues or emotions that motivate politics are items of interest or not, impassioned or not, for deeply held or perhaps superficially arrived at because the slogans of the media make them seem appealing. It is a mistake to think that what Republicans believe are responses to their interests or their values rather than what they learn on the tube or could dispense with some slogans and adopt others with aplomb if there were a fashion to do so, as seems to be the case with people saying the 2020 election was rigged. They know that only vicariously; somebody told them that. That is different from watching sports, which last as long as they last and so critics have to come to understand why there is drama even in baseball, where there seem to be longueurs when what is happening is that people get beer and hot dogs and conversations while appreciating the ballpark and the crowds and the characteristic noise and pay attention when something important is happening. Color commentators, for their part, tie the television audience to what is broadcast on the field. That is why exhibiting a television broadcast of a football game without sportscasters proved unrewarding. There was an experiment where a New York Jet game some forty years ago was broadcast without the commentators, either play by play or for the color commentator, just to see if it would work. Viewers quickly signed off. All they could do was see their own living rooms to accompany the game while commentators brought the viewer into the picture, the talk from the television regularly updating what had transpired and what might happen next. So much for treating vicarious sports as in unalloyed real time. It needs dramatic emphasis to make it palatable. But politics is different and so its slow paced reality explains a lot about its dynamics and makes it always problematic how the viewers, the voters, are to make sense of what they experience, and so pay attention to its structured and emphasized drama and with less regard to the standby of demographics and policy as the engines of the engagement with the electorate and the political process.
The most important parameters of real time were established in the Constitution itself by designating time periods for members of Congress and the Presidency. The elections to be held anew every two or four or six year terms have obtained since the time of the first election in 1790 even during wars and even during the Civil war and no serious challenge to the legitimacy of such elections have had only two exceptions: that of the election of 1876, when an electoral commission had to sort out the post civil war political conflict and the 2020 election when the incumbent challenged the legitimacy of his successor. What happens is that every congressional cycle results in ;egos;ation passed in the first congressional term of a new President and then a backlash in the second congressional term of the president. The first year of a congressional term are filled with organization and fundraising and the momentum for electioneering build in the second half of the second year, many citizens not much interested in who they will vote for until close to the time of the election and this is so much clear that federal agencies have regulations not to interfere with the election by providing adverse publicity, though in the election of 2016 the FBI reopened a hearing into Hillaruy Clinton just eleven days before the election and that may have cost her the win.The importance of providing the electorate with a fair and equal basis to make its final deliberations are now in question because early voting may mean that people vote before some decisive action or remarks have been made before election time and so I would suggest everyone vote on election day now that there are available ways to have it all take place on that day via increased voting stations and making election day a national holiday. Then, their labors done, the electorate loses interest until close to when the two year term ends however much they may trot out appropriate sentiments about political matters so as to make conversation and to express what may be their temporary or even long lasting sentiments and belief, everyone a kibitzer just as everyone judges whether a local sports team is a disappointment or not for one or another reason. So we can say that time speeds up closer to an election or marks time for a while after it when a new crew has settled in-- a few months, let us say, in a new administration when the faces have become familiar and the major policy initiatives have been announced.
It is hard, however, to say whether politics have in general speeded up or slowed down. FDR’s Hundred Days seemed to move quickly because so much legislation was introduced to deal with the problems of the Great Depression and World War II moved quickly because every few days saw a new battle or battle line where teenagers put up wall maps to monitor the movement across France after D-Day.Some political scientists will say that speeding up political matter by having too many new events to absorb will lead to people bending towards a totalitarian frame of mind, wanting things to settle down in the name of “normality”. Rapid action by Hitler, especially after the Reichstag fire, led people to sign up with the Fuhrer. But actual interference by Nazis into the institutions of government as when Party members were required to enter academic department conferences were intimidating in fact rather than because of shifting a mentality. Moreover, FDR did not become totalitarian and one could argue that rapid change can allow people to shake themselves up politically and adapt new ways rather than stick in the mud. Certainly, the tumult of the Sixties did lead people to reorient their views about racial matters as they watched on television and saw both urban riots as well as clean cut non-violent protests and those two images remain as the key images around which people organize their sense of which side they are on.
My impression is that the pace of political real time has indeed slowed down in the past generation or so.It is more difficult to pass major legislation to such an extent that the only bills Biden can pass are omnibus compilations of very different measures just so as to create a coalition that will pass. Republicans are obdurate about passing anything except making rich people richer. Legal procedure has slowed to a virtual halt so that the Justice Department and subpoenas from Congress are hogtied so that things are slowed down to the point of becoming moot, as may happen with getting document production about Jan.6th, just as happened when the Mueller Report fizzled out because he was instructed by the justice department not to look into Trump’s taxes or his finances with deutscheBank. That is very different from Watergate when Judge Sirica pressed the Watergate defendants to come clean or take the consequences and so they folded and told what they knew about contacts they had in the White House
There are a number of ways whereby citizens can become drawn to the story of politics despite its longueurs because of it existing in real time and quite aside from the political sentiments and slogans that abide such as in the present moment when for reasons unclear many citizens regard the government as untrustworthy and devious even though the economy is doing well, the government is awarding any number of goodies to the population, and there are no serious threats of war abroad. The populace is attracted to attend to the government because of ceremonies, such as inaugurals and Memorial Day, by meetings with foreign leaders, visits of high officials to factories and other ceremonial settings. But these are not sustained or energized and it sometimes seems that getting half a minute on the nightly news is not likely to make much impact, much less get viewers to change their minds about whether to support their legislative agenda. You need something more to make people take themselves outside of their day to day lives of work and family to attend politics.
One way to make politics and government more dramatic is to use the old dramatic technique of having a story told from a point of view and that happens by refocusing politics through the lens of the President: what his character is like and how he changes his moods. While there is a continuity between Democratic Presidents, all of them more or less out to extend entitlements while Republicans for a few generations now concerned with protecting the wauy of life that prevailed in the United States in the Fifties before the advent of racial equality, Feminism and gay rights, each of the Presidents have their own distinctive personalities even if most of them have somehow managed to work themselves up the greasy pole to the top. Some might say that the populace does not really know what a President is like because they are seen carefully exposed to the public and trying to hide their foibles and not known the way a personal acquaintance might, it seems to me that high level politicians are so exposed, so much on stage, that we can read their personalities in great detail, they revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings even if there are differences people make of the overall evaluations of the Presidential figures and also, in fact, of even the primary candidates. Everyone knew that Dan Quale was a lightweight within a week of becoming the vice Presidential nominee under Bush ‘41, Quale a guy more interested in golfing than governance and a much lesser light than his own wife. Presidential figures are much more revealing. We knew quickly enough that Bill Clinton was smart and articulate and willing to compromise and also short tempered and a womanizer. Obama was notable for being an upstanding guy who was loyal to his family as well as someone who clearly explained his point of view even if his opponents tried unsuccessfully to portray him as a dangerous radical. Trump was what he seemed even if the voters thought that it might be a good idea to elect a man who might upset conventional things if he were a bit mean and whiney. Voters may not know policy but they do think themselves experts on character and so make that judgment accordingly having decided to become taken by that person. In short, Presidents are said to be both chiefs of state and chiefs of government, in contrast to what happens in Great Britain where the Queen is one and the Prime Minister is the other. But the more correct reading is that the President, like the Queen, is the chief personality and remains so only for the ;length of his office, his personality no longer of interest when he ceases to be in office. Nobody has a residual following of Obama, and I hope that rule holds for Trump as well.
My overall point is that however much in the past politics were driven by policies and demographics, politics presently responds to whatever dramatics are found in what seem to be the sluggishness of perceived politics however much the Biden Administration has a very vigorous legislative agenda. The populace has changed in that it wants sensationalism from its politics or at least that a great many citizens feel that way, even if it means overthrowing the way the Constitution operates, as happened in Jan. 6th and as may happen again. The alternative to anarchy may be for politicians to find new ways to convey a liveliness to politics. Maybe Fireside Chats for the present day, though that would not be Biden's strong suit. Maybe long road trips for a point, such as getting Build Back Better into law but, again, kind of old for Biden to go doing whistle stops as Harry Truman did. Jen Psaki has to come up with a new gimmick because those are the things that count. It was easier to mobilize the people when there was a war on, though even war is not a good gimmick in that the American people were indifferent to the fact in 2004 had then been declared on the basis of lies. As Bob Dole said in the 1996 campaign, “Is there no shame?” as it concerned Clinton. As for the more general question, I wonder.