A young advertising executive named Harry Treleaven believed that television could turn politicians from the dull gray men they had always been into celebrities, actors with a narrative that far outweighed any of their policy positions. As a Nixon media advisor put it: “Voters are basically lazy. . . . Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. . . . The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”
