The campaign of 2008, as those in 2004 and 2000 seems to be dominated by the question: “Who are these men and this woman?” Notwithstanding their long record of public service, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain are engaged in refining the answer, offering the voters "new" and "better" insights on their own personality, sometimes tryng of "creating" a new one, as senator McCain does,
pretending of having always been more conservative, and faithful to the party line, than he was. Senator Barack Obama has the advantage of presenting a very short record, and therefore his image so far is "new" and appealing.
With the three candidates, spouses and children are prominently displayed, moments of devotion and prayer recorded by the cameras, hobbies and pets presented as evidence that the candidates are close to the common man. Better: that they ARE the common man, plus uncommon courage and determination. Who will be the most convincing performer is a matter for November 4th to reveal.
Albeit hardly new in American public life (one has only to think to the 1892 election of Grover Cleveland, or to Richard Nixon’s autodefense in TV, or to the Clinton-Lewinsky soap opera) the obsession for the private life of the politician has not been investigated in depth. It is often understood as a despicable result of the new role of the media, or of the rise of negative advertising. Here is a massive volume of 2003 that offers a large amount of scholarship useful to situate historically what Jean Bethke Elshtain called the “displacement of politics” in the US (Elshtain 1997, 166).
The book is "Public and Private in American History", edited by a group of Italian historians: Raffaella Baritono, Daria Frezza, Alessandra Lorini, Maurizio Vaudagna and Elisabetta Vezzosi.The work was published by Otto, a publishing house based in Italy that produces texts in English, too.
The editors have collected an impressive number of essays, 27 in all, dealing with various topics, but the focus of the book is on the progressive erosion of the public-private dichotomy, a process that should be investigated in its historical development. Isaac Kramnick, for example, traces the now-forgotten origins of the Constitution as a “Godless document” (bitterly opposed by Anti-federalists) and argues that the Bush administration faith-based initiatives (not to mention photo opportunities of the cabinet meeting to pray) “are turning [James Madison] over in his grave” and that “Franklin, Jefferson and even Washington, would be appalled with all the God talk in American public life [today].” (Kramnick 2003: 29).
But how did we arrive where we are now? Alan Brinkley looks at "Public and Private in the Culture of the Sixties" (a timely essay, 40 years after 1968), Daria Frezza at "The Public Boundaries of the Private Sphere in the Discourse of Early Twentieth-Century Social Science", Raffaella Baritono at the reflections of women social scientistis in the Progressive era.
The current confusion and pitiful state of the public discourse are the result of processes that developed over the entire Twentieth century, and accelerated after 1989. Weintraub: “While the public/private distinction is inherently problematic and often treacherous, frequently confusing and potentially misleading, it is also a powerful instrument of social analysis and moral reflection.” (Weintraub 1997: 38).While one may regret the absence of essays dealing with the impact of the media on the issue discussed (with the exception of Maurizio Vaudagna’s piece about Roosevelt’s use of the radio), this volume is full of interesting contributions and will be useful to scholars and students alike in this year of elections.
Fabrizio Tonello
Baritono et al. (eds.), "Public and Private in American History. State, Family, Subjectivity in the Twentieth Century, OTTO: Turin, 2003".
Elshtain, J. B., "The displacement of politics", in: Weintraub-Kumar (eds.), pp. 166:181.
Kramnick, I. "A Moral Republic: Public and Private in the Political Thought of the Founders", in Baritono et al., pp. 13:30.
Weintraub-Kumar (eds.), "Public and Private in Thought and Practice", University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1997.
Weintraub, J., "The public/private distinction", in ib., pp. 1:42.
