The Sociodrama of Presidential Politics: Rhetoric, Ritual, and Power in the Era of Teledemocracy

Abstract

In this paper I examine the American presidential campaign cycle as a series of ritualized sociodramas. Examples are used from the campaigns of 1988, 1992, and 1996 to illustrate the role of ritual, rhetoric, symbol, and media in the process of presidential power acquisition. These political processes are analyzed utilizing the concepts of sociodrama and rituals of rebellion extant in the literature of political anthropology. Specific cases such as the bus tours of the Clinton campaign, the Willie Horton commercials of the Bush campaign, and the case of Murphy Brown are examined in detail. The goal of the paper is to render an anthropological perspective on the process of choosing the American President in the era of teledemocracy. [American presidential campaign, ritual, rhetoric, symbol, media]

The Turn of the Offended

“…Accordingly, even as I focus in this article on formal political arenas, elections and routine party politics, I do so by concentrating first on The 2009 presidential elections brought to the fore the relevance of ritualized elements and affective dynamics. As underscored by recent ethnographic research on the procedural elements and party politics of other democratic polities (see Banerjee 2007;Coles 2004;Lazar 2004;McDonald 1997;McLeod 1999), these rituals and affective dynamicsoverlooked in previous analyses of elections-shed light on the processes by which voters calculate their stakes in elections. Abstention, which had predominated in El Salvador's elections until 2004, i has typically been explained as a symptom of cynicism and disillusionment (Cruz 1998a(Cruz , 2001 A few months before the presidential elections, Marta, the seventy-year-old woman who heads my host family, was chatting with a friend below a prominent poster of Mauricio…”

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“…9 Goody 1961, p. 159. 10 E.g., Edelman1974, 1988Goodin 1978;Hertzer 1989;McLeod 1999;Taylor 1981. Political institutions (voting in particular) are often explained by reference to their symbolic and expressive value.…”

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