The President Electric: Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Performance (review)

Timothy Raphael’s analysis of Ronald Reagan in relation to changing technologies frames not only a compelling argument about Reagan’s preparation for office, but maps a larger picture of the cultural and political landscape of the 20th century. The book’s lucid prose reimagines American culture through the lens of performance, arguing convincingly that the groundwork for Jon McKenzie’s “performance paradigm” was laid throughout the previous century, from “the end of the nineteenth century when the body electric first begins to flicker on the motion picture screen” (22). It is an erudite book, encompassing in its breadth Chautauqua performances and the 1939 World’s Fair; American corporate growth and advertising; Hamlet, Zelig, and George M. Cohan, among a plethora of interwoven, yet disparate, influences and lenses through which Raphael examines Reagan’s history and legacy. The notion of the “president electric” or body electric frames a provocative rereading of the “body politic” — in both the medieval doctrine of the king’s two bodies as well as the contemporary sense of “organized society.” Raphael reads this shift as a process of surrogation, drawing on Joseph Roach and Michael Rogin to propose that “the skills Reagan mastered working in radio, film, television, advertising, and public relations formed the basis for a presidential character fully equipped to exploit the dominant cultural media of the day” (21).

The book is organized largely chronologically in line with Reagan’s biography, however, it is crucial to note that Raphael often chooses not to focus on strict biographical detail, acknowledging that such sources already exist (including Reagan’s first autobiography, Where’s the Rest of Me?). This text is key throughout, as Reagan’s own writing about his “dual” careers in performance and politics serves not only to provide information, but also functions as a prime example of Reagan’s own performance and marketing of self. The introduction opens with Reagan’s iconic screen appearance at the 1984 Republican Convention, which Raphael reads as a talisman for the book’s argument. The first chapter begins with Reagan’s birth and early life in Illinois, linking Reagan’s childhood to the 1907 Education of Henry Adams, arguing that Reagan’s “education” began largely where Adams’s ended. In one of the first of a series of quotations drawn directly from the record that so perfectly frame the contentions of the book, Raphael cites the high school commencement speech of Reagan’s childhood sweetheart, Mugs Cleaver, “A Chair for the New Home,” in which she argued that “‘to train the citizens of tomorrow’ [...] the ‘new home’ would ‘require [...] a Chair, or Department, of Public Speaking and Dramatics’” (34). The opening chapter proposes that Reagan’s childhood demonstrates the centrality of performance to the American culture into which he was born, from the explosion of Chautauqua’s blend of education with entertainment, as well as his mother Nelle’s love of the stage (the entire family performed in community drama) and performances of faith within the Disciples of Christ church to which she belonged (and into which he was baptized, by his own choice, at age 11). I would suggest that perhaps the pageant culture of the early 20th century, such as the work of Percy MacKaye, might provide a further example of the interlinking of civic pride, religion, and performance that marked Reagan’s childhood as paradigmatic of the “culture of performance” of the early 20th century.

The next two chapters move through Reagan’s career in the radio industry, which Raphael reads alongside later famous appearances of Reagan’s voice, such as the 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater that thrust him into politics. Raphael here draws upon Barthes’s notion of the “grain of the voice” to focus on Reagan’s development of affect, suggesting that his growth in these media had the effect by 1980 of hardwiring “his voice [...] into the American psyche” (61). He uses Garry Wills...