TELEVISION

President polishing his media presence

By Don Aucoin and Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff, 9/15/2001

ike every president for the past four decades, George W. Bush has had to confront the forbidding power of television to crystallize the defining moments of his presidency.

Now, with TV's unblinking eye capturing his every move in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in US history, Bush seems to be trying to sharpen his sometimes-wobbly grasp of the medium to project a stronger sense of leadership and unity.

Some have faulted the president for appearing tentative during some of his TV appearances this week, such as the speech he delivered to the nation on Tuesday night. But yesterday, some analysts said, he took two decisive steps in dispelling that image.

First, Bush was both eloquent and composed as he addressed a prayer service for the victims at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., that was televised by all the broadcast and cable networks.

Then, later yesterday, in a shift from TV's rhetorical arena to its realm of visual symbolism, the president made a nationally televised visit to the site of the collapsed World Trade Center in New York City.

His arm draped around a firefighter with a weatherbeaten face, Bush spoke to rescue workers through a bullhorn while surrounded by rubble. When one worker shouted, ''Can you hear me?'' Bush responded: ''I can hear you, and the rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!'' The crowd erupted in cheers.

He moved among hundreds of hard-hat-wearing volunteers and firefighters, shaking hands and offering words of encouragement. At one point, he waved a small American flag handed to him by a volunteer while the crowd chanted, ''USA! USA!''

It made for potent television imagery.

''This guy has absolutely solidified his role,'' said Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz ''This was showing Bush as a real human being, instead of a programmed script reader. This was just the real soul of the guy coming through.''

Carl Gottlieb, a former TV news director who is now deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said Bush's address in the church ''was probably the best speech he's ever made. He was more comfortable in the [church] venue; he has a deep religious belief, and he's not hesitant to come out with it.''

Bush has often seemed uncomfortable on TV. He was sometimes awkward and tongue-tied during his debates with Democratic foe Al Gore, and he has yet to hold a prime-time televised news conference. ''Unlike Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton, all of whom seemed to glow on television, Bush is like his father, and his father's mentor, Nixon, in his tremendous vulnerability to TV's X-ray eye,'' said Mark Crispin Miller, author of ''The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.''

His general unease on television has presented a potential problem for Bush, because since the dawn of the media age, presidents have often demonstrated leadership via their on-air performance. For instance, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, President Ronald Reagan took to the airwaves and delivered a speech that memorialized the fallen astronauts and evoked the nation's grief.

''Some people are great communicators: Reagan was one, Clinton was another,'' said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics at the University of Minnesota. ''President Bush doesn't seem to have found his way on this yet.''

Bush was accompanied yesterday by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who, in the view of some commentators, has presented a more reassuring image on television than Bush. But that is not entirely Bush's fault, analysts said.

''It's hard during a security crisis for him to be as visible as Rudy Giuliani, who has been quite a comforting figure,'' said NPR commentator Steven D. Stark. ''Giuliani is almost like a character in a TV drama: You see him two or three times a day. Bush can't do that, for security reasons.''

Whatever the level of his communication skills, polls taken before yesterday had found strong public support for Bush, as is often the case during a national crisis.

In the days ahead, as the United States prepares to retaliate against those who orchestrated the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush will need to repeat the skillful use he made of television yesterday, analysts said.

''There is an enormous policy issue now in which television is inevitably involved,'' said Marvin Kalb, Washington executive director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy.

''We are indeed at a new moment in history,'' Kalb said. Bush's ''responsibility in this day and age is to persuade the American people that his course of action - which is bound to be controversial - is the right course of action.''

This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 9/15/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.