Where My Mind has Wandered

Why I Am Mad at Jimmy Carter

I have been meaning to do a post on President Bush’s legacy and Jimmy Carter beat me to the punch when he called the Bush Administration "the worst administration ever." Now some might say that Carter is calling the kettle black in this case. His legacy isn’t so hot depending upon how you look at it. To his credit, however, he has some shining moments in international relations and he had the reputation of being a tireless worker when he was in office. Tireless. Endless days that exhausted him. George W. Bush does not have that going for him. In a society that celebrates rags to riches stories and a wholesome Midwestern work ethic I think that Carter’s background as a peanut farmer and his 20 hour days will compare nicely with Bush’s background as a ner-do-well son of a rich politician who went to bed by sundown every day of his presidency.

I never intended to compare Carter to Bush, however. I intended to compare Grant to Bush, because I think that is a more apt comparison. Both administrations have been characterized by rampant cronyism and a chief executive that left the business of the business to powerful, if somewhat corrupt underlings. As described in Wikipedia (as good a source of general opinion as any), "although Grant was personally honest, he not only tolerated financial and political corruption among top aides but also protected them once exposed." Sound familiar? No matter where you look -- Harriet Myers, pretty much every non-military employee in the Green Zone, the 150 lawyers hired from Pat Robertson’s law school, the K-Street project, the attorney general scandal, Jack Abramoff -- the list goes on, and it isn’t pretty. Still, politics have gotten neither cleaner nor dirtier over time, and Grant has a head start, so you might think Bush would have a chance. I don’t think so.

The administration’s message machine is in high-gear cranking out the line "only history will judge the Bush presidency". This is a classic Rove/Cheney tactic, hammering home a line ad nausea until it becomes accepted. Both McCain and Giuliani have been trotting this out on the campaign trail, Giuliani as recently as last night on Letterman. It does not matter how many times they repeat it, history is already judging the administration and it doesn’t look good.

First of all, Grant helped win the Civil War as the general in charge of the Union Army, while Bush sat out the war of his generation and then started two wars that won’t end well, at least not during his time in office. I don’t think you get credit for conflicts that someone else cleans up after you leave office. Grant has also benefited from recent work of historians revisiting the Civil War and the man himself. For example, the caricature of Grant as a drunk looks to be overblown at best, and possibly off-base entirely. He certainly drank much less than some celebrated Confederate generals, many of which attended a liquor and cigar-fueled card game in General Longstreet’s tent most nights early in the war.

Where Bush really loses out is how his moments in office will be preserved. The hundreds of hours of video footage of Bush will win him the prize. The legacy of most presidents is passed on through the written word, particularly in speeches, but also in personal and official letters, where ideas tend to be well-organized and thoughtful. People don’t send letters anymore, they appear on camera. And no modern president has been more poorly suited for video than George Bush. Even his most ardent supporters will admit Bush is a bad public speaker, particularly off-the-cuff. If he were a smooth public speaker, more comfortable off-the-cuff, had a more compelling persona, he would be judged, today and in the future much differently.

We don’t have original and edited video and audio from Ulysses Grant, or James Buchanan, or Warren Harding, or Franklin Pierce. But historians in the future will be able to sift through thousands of hours of George Bush on YouTube and it will tip the balance.

For those interested in the rankings of American presidents Wikipedia has a great page that aggregates many studies and polls.

Desperate Houswives for $1.99

One of my favorite radio programs is Marketplace on NPR. The theme song alone can get me in a good mood. I was listening on Tuesday to Kai Ryssdal interview Disney CEO Bob Iger and was drawn into Iger’s rationale behind selling TV series episodes on iTunes. The outtake that caught my attention is:

IGER: A successful TV series will produce between 22 and 25 episodes each season. And the committed or the avid viewer of that series, in a given year, will probably watch somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of all those episodes. … Because of other choices, other choices lifestyle-wise, meaning you're busy, you've got other obligations or other choices in terms of consuming media or spending your time. And if we could figure out ways, which we are starting to do, thanks again to digital technology, to engage these people more often, to get them to consume more, because we're creating either convenience or a different price to value relationship or making use of a new technology, then we actually will grow our business instead of in any way decreasing or diminishing our business.

So a lot of these initiatives, the one you just cited, iTunes and the $1.99 episode, or one you mentioned earlier, streaming on ABC, are actually designed to create incremental consumption, to give people who may not have a chance to watch as many of these programs as they once did, to watch more instead of to shift their viewing from the I'll call it the initial airing that creates the most value on ABC, to a secondary consumption form that may create less value. And so far, while the results are still relatively new to us because this has only been going on for about a year, what we're seeing is in fact incremental consumption and not a cannibalization of the initial form of consumption.

First of all, it may be common industry knowledge, but I’ve never known that the committed viewer only views one-third of the episodes in a given season. That strikes me as a low number, but perhaps not a low average, and apparently American Idol hasn’t skewed the industries overall numbers.

Beyond the wake up call on the relative lack of commitment to any one TV series, Iger is speaking not of the well-documented fragmentation of TV viewership, but to changes in overall media consumption.

A study I reference frequently when I give presentations is "A Day in the Life: An Ethnographic Study of Media Consumption", a study conducted by Ball State University's Center for Media Design. The study shows how Internet, phone, and game console use have increased dramatically over a 10-year period ending in 2005. Television viewership still dominates, but other media is gaining ground fast, and leaving traditional print in the dust. In addition, the study shows that consumers use the Web consecutively or simultaneously with other media, including television, print and radio. It also concludes that combining online marketing with marketing in other mediums "adds substantial incremental reach to other media, making it a great partner."

So online use is not only growing, it is improving the reach of other media types, even those whose reach continues to fall.

Most interesting of all, if Bob Iger is a good indicator Disney understands what this all means to their business and is doing something about it.