Yesterday, building off an essay by Jay Rosen, I argued that modern presidential nominating conventions are very interesting–not as part of the struggle to get 51% of the vote, but as rituals, performances, symbols.

Rituals, in turn, really affect politics and public policy. Political scientists and reporters typically try to explain politicians’ behavior by assuming that they want to get elected and re-elected, or that they want to enact particular policies. But this analysis begs the question of why anyone would want to hold public office in the first place. Most people would rather die. It’s no answer to say that politicians want “power.” First of all, most people don’t. Second, most political offices in the US don’t come with much power; often their power is insufficient to achieve the outcomes that voters expect.

I think that some politicians are quite altruistic (contrary to what Nick Beaudrot says in a comment on this blog), and this partly explains their entry into politics. But to a large extent, I believe they want to participate in our public rituals. They want to hear someone announce them: “LAY-dies and gentlemen, the next great mayor of our magnificent city … ” They want to watch balloons rise up in a great hall when they take the podium. They want to cut ribbons and kiss babies and get interviewed on Nightline.

All this means that different people would enter politics if we had different rituals. (Likewise, different scholars would deliberately go into college administration if our academic rituals were different.) In this sense, ritual matters.

On our recent trip to Burgundy, I began re-reading one of my favorite books, Johan Huizinga’s Waning of the Middle Ages (1919). Huizinga argues that chivalry (jousts, orders of knighthood, the cult of courtly love) was completely artificial by the fifteenth century. It didn’t reflect the underlying reality of a commercial, urbanizing Europe. Yet people continued to “play” at chivalry very seriously throughout the century. In turn, chivalry mattered. It meant that political leaders had to be good at jousting. It caused some wealthy bourgeois (the “real” pillars of the society) to ruin their fortunes by marrying their children to poor nobles with good chivalric credentials. It certainly ate up a lot of social resources. And it served as an–increasingly inadequate–tool with which people tried to understand their world.

Modern political conventions are like the jousts of fifteenth-century Burgundy. They have lost their original purpose. In the long run, they are doomed. Yet they still matter.

As I recall, there’s a passage in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise about the “most photographed barn in America.” People go there because others do. You cannot see the actual barn, because it is surrounded by hordes of photographers, their cameras whirring and clicking. Their backs are the spectacle.

In one sense, modern (or should I say “post-modern”?) presidential nominating conventions are like that. Tens of thousands of people go because–tens of thousands of people go. Networks cover them because–so many important people are there. As Jay Rosen notes in Press Think: “nothing happens, as any reporter will tell you. But what does that mean: nothing happens? Nothing substantive. No new information revealed. Nothing said that hasn’t been tested for acceptability to voters targeted long ago. No conflicts allowed, no intra-party debate. No surprises. No news. Just rah-rah and spectacle.”

For Jay, this observation is itself a clich?, endlessly repeated by reporters eager to call the whole convention business (and campaigning generally) a sham. Jay quotes William Powers of the National Journal: “That’s what modern presidential campaigns are, after all — elaborately staged big-budget productions in which every line that’s uttered, every piece of scenery, is carefully calculated to win over the public.” Jay finds it “fascinating … that journalists will still offer this observation today, at least twenty years after its SELL BY date, as if it they were tuned to something the rest of us did not grasp.”

Once you think about it, a modern convention is fascinating, and something does happen there. But its interest isn’t accessible if you look at politics in conventional terms, as a contest between two teams with contrasting personalities and proposals. From that point of view, it’s unclear why reporters should cover the conventions at all. If either side gets a post-convention “bounce,” it’s arguably the result of press coverage, not of the convention itself. A responsible media outlet might choose to stay away from both parties’ gatherings and use the same space to write about the substance of Social Security or Iraq.

But what if we see politics as ritual, spectacle, tradition, or even “convention” (in the broader sense)? Then we can ask: What do these ceremonies mean? Why do they linger past their original purpose? How does their symbolism change? Jay–more than half-seriously, I think–suggests that newspapers send their religion-beat reporters to the conventions this summer.

Diana Mutz and Byron Reeves have conducted fascinating experiments that demonstrate the serious effects of rudeness in our televised politics. (See “Videomalaise Revisited: Effects of Television Incivility on Political Trust,” Journalism and Mass Communication Educator” Spring 2004, 59/1; not yet online.)

Some people (notably Hibbing and Theiss-Morse) have argued that Americans dislike disagreement and see it as unnecessary. Therefore, if our political system involves great debates about matters of substance and principle, many Americans will tune it out, just as they forbid discussions of politics and religion in their own homes. If this is true, it’s bad news indeed.

Others have argued that a generally negative tone in news coverage and political advertising has turned people off–not only made them less trusting, but also dissuaded them from voting. This would be bad news, too, since we need hard-hitting investigative journalism and tough criticism of incumbents.

Mutz and Reeves develop a third thesis that I find generally more hopeful. They exposed people to videotaped debates (conducted by actors) that were identical in substance–point by point–but that differed in civility. In one debate, the actors introduced their comments with deferential and polite remarks, appeared to listen, and didn’t interrupt; in the other, they used insults and rude facial expressions to demonstrate contempt. (Their behavior was well within the normal range for television shows, by the way.)

Viewers of the uncivil debates expressed considerably less trust in politicians and government after watching. Physiological instruments showed that they were emotionally aroused by what they saw. Viewers of the civil debate were less aroused and more positive toward the political system.

The authors assert that we react to behavior on television as we would to similar behavior by real people in our living rooms. Rudeness comes across as aggression and triggers very powerful and basic responses.

So why is there so much rudeness in televised politics? Wouldn’t it pay to be polite, if you’re a politician or a cable-news host? Unfortunately, participants in the experiment rated the uncivil debate as considerably more entertaining than the civil one, and said that they would be more likely to watch the same show again. Rude behavior lowers respect for politics and civic engagement, but it entertains.

That’s a conundrum, but there’s at least a ray of hope. Politicians have an interest in sustaining public support for the political system. Perhaps liberals need this support more than conservatives do, but even most conservatives don’t like to be part of a loathed profession and institution. Therefore, while news hosts and producers will always promote conflict and incivility, politicians should think of their professional self-interest and act politely.

It’s also possible, although Mutz and Reeves didn’t test this hypothesis, that citizens trust individual politicians whom they perceive to be polite; that would create an incentive for civility. If I were a politician, I would care a little about the ratings of the shows on which I appeared, but much more about how viewers perceived me and my profession. I’d make sure to be extremely polite.

By the way, I’m not a big proponent of politeness or civility for its own sake. I take a much tougher view of what it means to be “civic.” But this article suggests that civility matters to the health of our democracy.