Every successful story needs a hero. Someone the audience can identify with. It is the hero’s job to establish a point of view. It’s interesting to look at U.S. Presidents. Some were far more successful than others at establishing their POV.
I have been reading The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon. It is a classic history of The Reagan Presidency. What caught my interest was Reagan’s love of story and how he used his storytelling abilities to become “the great communicator.”
Reagan understood the need to communicate a clear point of view. As preparation for becoming the president he had his staff collect clips and columns from the first one hundred days of the Carter administration. Carter had engaged in a flurry of activity. Hundreds of proposals had been sent to congress but there was no clear theme. Carter was unable to identify his point of view. Consequently no one knew what he stood for.
The press began to report that Carter “seemed to believe in everything and stand for nothing.”
Reagan learned from Carter’s mistakes and limited his proposals to those he could connect with his big story ideas of economic recovery and confidence building. Reagan integrated his emotions into his story much more successfully than Carter. Whether people agreed with him or not they were much more likely to understand what he stood for and that may be his greatest legacy.
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