Page 97 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Revolutions
In practice, such bypassing of the parties occurred chiefly at the local
and state levels. For example, John Brinkley, a quack radio doctor with a
huge audience, ran a write-in campaign for Governor of Kansas in 1930
on the basis of his radio constituency, nearly winning with 30 percent
of the vote in the multicandidate race. 124 Charles Coughlin, who never
actually ran for office, built a weekly political audience in the 1930s
ranging from 15 million to 45 million people – a potentially potent
mass audience outside the party channels. 125 In 1935, Coughlin ap-
pealed to listeners to contact the White House opposing the proposal
for a World Court supported by Roosevelt. His effort succeeded in
producing 200,000 telegrams, a striking feat for an independent po-
litical figure operating without the backing of an established political
organization. 126
Political communication through television occurred far earlier than
is generally recognized, and its very early political history is nearly coinci-
dent with that of radio. Al Smith’s acceptance speech at the 1928 conven-
tion was broadcast by General Electric in Schenectady, New York, on the
highly experimental new technology of television, although the viewing
audience was negligible, since no commercial production of television
sets yet existed. 127 The 1940 Republican convention was broadcast, also
to a tiny audience, and when the wartime freeze on television production
finally ended, the audience for the new medium soared in the late 1940s
and ’50s. Truman has been called the first “television President” for his
broadcast address to Congress in 1947 and his televised programs from
the Oval Office. 128
Theyear1952wasinmanywaysthetippingpointforthenewmedium,
as 1928 was for radio. Commercially, television was by that year seri-
ously threatening radio station revenues, and political candidates were
paying increasing attention to television over radio. The 1952 presiden-
tial race featured the first televised coverage of primaries and the fa-
mous “Checkers” speech by Richard Nixon, and it was the firstinwhich
television-based political communication was available to a majority of

124 Kansas State Historical Society, “A Kansas Portrait: John R. Brinkley,” 2001, http://
www.kshs.org/people/brinkley.htm.
125 Rodger Streitmatter, Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped
American History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997).
126
Ibid.
127
J. Leonard Reinsch, Getting Elected: From Radio and Roosevelt to Television and
Reagan (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988).
128
Ibid., p. 46.
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