Snakes, ladders & the folly of Q-A campaigning

I began the year by raising the question of whether interviews ever deliver anything but bad news for politicians and boredom for audiences, since when I've posted some illustrative videos, like yesterday's example of a gaffe from Mrs Thatcher in her final interview during the 1987 general election.

My concerns arise from what John Heritage and I dubbed the snakes and ladders theory of political communication, which proposes that speeches are like the ladders in the board-game with the potential for generating positive sound bites and news that take you up the board - whereas interviews and other Q-A formats are like the snakes that at worst trip you up, and at best leave audiences with an unmemorable sense of blandness and/or boredom.

As we move towards a general election that promises little in the way of speeches, rallies or excitement, here's a reminder of just how tedious Q-A campaigning can be.

Ask the Alliance rallies
Although Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock made some pretty impressive speeches during the 1987 general election (e.g. HERE), the SDP-Liberal Alliance thought they knew better than to hold traditional campaign rallies, opting instead for Q-A sessions with the two Davids (Owen & Steel).

As far as I remember, these generated no quotable quotes from either of the leaders - but the format itself became the news story, resembling as it did:

Gardeners' Question Time on a bad day


NEWS: Is the format working?
So, about half way through the campaign, and in the absence of much to report, the mass television audience is being told that the Q-A format has itself became the main news story.

And here, from the same programme as the one above, we're taken to a park bench, where two Alliance MPs (John Cartwright, SDP, and David Alton, Liberal) are earnestly discussing the problem and what to do about it:


Rochdale to the rescue
Two MPs would hardly have agreed to be filmed worrying about campaign had the Alliance parties themselves not been having second thoughts about the Ask the Alliance rallies.

And sure enough, the next clip showed that another Liberal MP, Cyril Smith, was doing something about it and had invited Liberal leader David Steel to make a speech from a trailer at an open-air rally in Rochdale.

But, as the reporter implies in winding up the story, by then it was too little and too late:


Lessons for 2010?
Nearly a quarter of a century later, the current Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has been touring the country to speak at Meet the People meetings that have a remarkably similar format to those of the ill-fated Ask the Alliance rallies.

Meanwhile, the political parties are locked in continuing discussions with the BBC, ITV and Sky about exactly what form the Q-A sessions with party leaders will take in the televised 'debates'.

My hope is that those who are cooking up the rules - as well as the parties' campaign strategists - are old enough and wise enough to have learnt something from the tedium generated by the Ask the Alliance rallies.

My fear is that the TV debates - and much of the rest of the campaign - will do little more than make Gardeners' Question Time on a bad day the daily norm, rather than the dreary exception that it was in 1987.

The day when Mrs Thatcher apologised (twice) for what she said in an interview

I've made the point in an number of recent posts (e.g. HERE and HERE) that radio and television interviews seldom generate anything but bad news for politicians - but only hit the headlines if the interviewee slips up and says something that the rest of the media thinks worth reporting.

One of the most spectacular cases of such a gaffe came when David Dimbleby was interviewing Mrs Thatcher two or three nights before polling day in the 1987 general election - in which she referred to people who "just drool and drivel they care".

Dimbleby immediately picked up on her choice of words, in response to which she apologised (twice) whilst revising what she had said.

The drool and drivel sequence was quite widely replayed and reported elsewhere in the media but, luckily for her, it happened so close to polling day that there wasn't time for a big story to brew up and it had little or no impact on the eventual result.


RELATED POSTS:

· Do interviews ever deliver anything but bad news for politicians and boredom for audiences?

· Will the 2010 UK general election be the first one to leave us speechless?

· Two more straight answers from Mandelson - about failed coups and the PM's rages

· Mandelson gives two straight answers to two of Paxman’s questions

· Rare video clip of a politician giving 5 straight answers to 5 consecutive questions

· Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule

· A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question

· Gordon Brown's interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg

· A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions

· Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it

· Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?

· Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them

Nobel Prize for Economics (& Atkinson Award for Imagery): Joseph Stiglitz

Today's Independent has an interesting interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in which he is described as having 'the veteran teacher's ability to put the intellectually inferior at their ease'.

Unlike the economics teachers of my undergraduate days (who only inspired me to drop the subject in favour of sociology), Stiglitz has quite a way with words that I've blogged about before.

How good an economist he is, I have no idea, but this isn't the first time that I've been impressed by the ease and frequency with which he uses imagery to make his points intelligible to wider audiences.

Here are some samples from the article in today's Independent, followed by video clips of him from televised interviews over the past year or so.

Garbage disposal service
The US government, Stiglitz says, was reduced to the role of garbage disposal service for the banks' toxic assets, bad loans and worthless securities they themselves had created.

Safety net
The safety net should focus on protecting individuals; but the safety net was extended to corporations, in the belief that the consequences of not doing so would be too horrific. Once extended, it will be difficult to withdraw.

Blackmail
The world-weary response of the media and the politicians, after the immediate horrors have passed – to give in to the financial sector's blackmail.

A gun to our heads
He reminds us that the banks have effectively tried to keep "a gun to our heads", that says that if we don't keep them going on their terms then they will "kill the economy".

The market is a crazy man
"You're dealing with a crazy man, you're asking what I can do to placate a crazy man: Having got what he wants he will still kill you."

The Great American Robbery
His sheer indignation at what he calls "the Great American Robbery" – that multi-trillion dollar bailout for the banks sanctioned by the Bush and Obama administrations – is as awesome as the sums involved, and as understandable.

Calm sea of financial stability
According to Stiglitz, far from free markets delivering a calm ocean of financial stability, they have delivered us a financial crisis, on average, every year or two.

Stiglitz on 'tail-spins', 'diseases' and 'party-poopers':


(If you're interested in how effectively imagery can be used in speeches and presentations, see Chapter 7 of Lend Me Your Ears: 'Painting Pictures with words: the use of imagery and anecdotes', pp. 215-240).