into assets, his deficits into advantages. That had been the plan.
The smile was meant to be reassuring. He was a man with a reputation for reading spreadsheets, surveys of the immediate and long-term trends in small corporate manufacturing, IMF reports, for relaxation. Favourite author, Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve Board: ‘I have always argued that an up-to-date set of the most detailed estimates for the latest available quarter is far more useful for forecasting accuracy than a more sophisticated model structure.’ Words to live by.
He needed to be warmed up. To smile is to be human. A sense of humour – he really needed to get one of those. The Gordon grin. It was supposed to offer warmth andreassurance. But it repeatedly misfired. Not once, or sometimes, but all the time. ‘Liberty is the first and founding value of our country. Security is the first duty of our government.’ Paint-stripper grin. ‘A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent.’ Stony gargoyle smile.
The separation between what he was saying and what his face was doing added up to a disturbing disjunction. The result was sinister. Pathological. It was something new and unwanted loosed to roam unchecked in the culture. Gerry started to think when he made his 9 p.m. check on the twins and Madeleine, her abductor must have already been in the room, lurking in the shadows behind the bedroom door, waiting, watching. A new sense of apprehension and unsettlement seeping through into everyday life. A smile like the brass plate on a coffin. Wheeeere is he? I love Tony Bair! … No, I don’t like Gordon Brown!
Norman Mailer remembered Richard Nixon as ‘a church usher, of the variety who would twist a boy’s ear after removing him from church’. And as the months ticked past – the Brown bounce in the polls crashing by November into a 14-point deficit; the honeymoon souring, the smile hung on the damaged face muscles growing ever more berserk, ever more pleading; hair colour warmed up and toned down, hair newly volumised and shingled – Nixon is the politician Brown came to increasingly resemble.
Nixon was the first politician of the television age to consciously recognise that political success had come to depend almost entirely on the presentation of a pleasing personality. The issues merely provide the occasions for testing the personal appeal of the contenders: everything hinges on the tremble of the hand or voice, the slick of sweat on brow or upper lip, the general air of ease or unease under performance pressure. (‘Body language’. That was what all the commentators said they would be looking out for at Gordon’s Camp David meeting with George Bush in July. Gordon’s graphic body language, its stammer and stutter). The presentation of a pleasing personality thing was not news that Nixon revelled in, noted Richard Schickel, because he had enough self-awareness to recognise that a pleasing personality was precisely what he did not possess.
Nixon’s problem was himself. Not what he said but the man he was. The camera portrayed him clearly. It showed a man who craved regulation, who flourished best in the darkness, behind clichés, behind phalanxes of young advisers. But to his amazement, Nixon discovered that a candidate no longer needed a personality of his own in order to stand for public office. There were people now who could make one up for you.
Nixon survived, despite his flaws, wrote Joe McGinnis in his account of the 1968 US presidential election, because he was tough and smart, and – some said – dirty when he had to be. Also because there was nothing else he knew. A man to whom politics is all there is in life willalmost always beat one to whom it is only an occupation.
It wasn’t a new Gordon Brown that was at the top of the polls halfway though his
The smile was meant to be reassuring. He was a man with a reputation for reading spreadsheets, surveys of the immediate and long-term trends in small corporate manufacturing, IMF reports, for relaxation. Favourite author, Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve Board: ‘I have always argued that an up-to-date set of the most detailed estimates for the latest available quarter is far more useful for forecasting accuracy than a more sophisticated model structure.’ Words to live by.
He needed to be warmed up. To smile is to be human. A sense of humour – he really needed to get one of those. The Gordon grin. It was supposed to offer warmth andreassurance. But it repeatedly misfired. Not once, or sometimes, but all the time. ‘Liberty is the first and founding value of our country. Security is the first duty of our government.’ Paint-stripper grin. ‘A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent.’ Stony gargoyle smile.
The separation between what he was saying and what his face was doing added up to a disturbing disjunction. The result was sinister. Pathological. It was something new and unwanted loosed to roam unchecked in the culture. Gerry started to think when he made his 9 p.m. check on the twins and Madeleine, her abductor must have already been in the room, lurking in the shadows behind the bedroom door, waiting, watching. A new sense of apprehension and unsettlement seeping through into everyday life. A smile like the brass plate on a coffin. Wheeeere is he? I love Tony Bair! … No, I don’t like Gordon Brown!
Norman Mailer remembered Richard Nixon as ‘a church usher, of the variety who would twist a boy’s ear after removing him from church’. And as the months ticked past – the Brown bounce in the polls crashing by November into a 14-point deficit; the honeymoon souring, the smile hung on the damaged face muscles growing ever more berserk, ever more pleading; hair colour warmed up and toned down, hair newly volumised and shingled – Nixon is the politician Brown came to increasingly resemble.
Nixon was the first politician of the television age to consciously recognise that political success had come to depend almost entirely on the presentation of a pleasing personality. The issues merely provide the occasions for testing the personal appeal of the contenders: everything hinges on the tremble of the hand or voice, the slick of sweat on brow or upper lip, the general air of ease or unease under performance pressure. (‘Body language’. That was what all the commentators said they would be looking out for at Gordon’s Camp David meeting with George Bush in July. Gordon’s graphic body language, its stammer and stutter). The presentation of a pleasing personality thing was not news that Nixon revelled in, noted Richard Schickel, because he had enough self-awareness to recognise that a pleasing personality was precisely what he did not possess.
Nixon’s problem was himself. Not what he said but the man he was. The camera portrayed him clearly. It showed a man who craved regulation, who flourished best in the darkness, behind clichés, behind phalanxes of young advisers. But to his amazement, Nixon discovered that a candidate no longer needed a personality of his own in order to stand for public office. There were people now who could make one up for you.
Nixon survived, despite his flaws, wrote Joe McGinnis in his account of the 1968 US presidential election, because he was tough and smart, and – some said – dirty when he had to be. Also because there was nothing else he knew. A man to whom politics is all there is in life willalmost always beat one to whom it is only an occupation.
It wasn’t a new Gordon Brown that was at the top of the polls halfway though his
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