Pomp and Power, Performers and Politicians: The California Theatre State

Original Article
Pomp and power, performers and

politicians: The California theatre state
Elizabeth Helen Essarya,* and Christian Ferneyb
a
Social Science Division, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway,

Malibu, California 92063, USA.
Duke University, Kenan Institute of Ethics, 103 West Duke Building, Durham,
North Carolina 27708, USA.
*Corresponding author.
Abstract The year 2013 marks the 10th year anniversary of the California
gubernatorial recall election that replaced Grey Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger and
reinvigorated debates about celebrity politics in the United States. While critics argue
that politics has become about entertainment, rather than statecraft, this article
challenges the notion that performance can be separated from politics. Instead,
symbolic action is a central feature of political processes. Specifically, the cosmology
of the state dictates the animating centers of society, within which politicians must
perform for the sake of reanimating the myths and reconstituting the people. Using
case studies of the initial gubernatorial campaigns of Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson and
Arnold Schwarzenegger, this article highlights the elements of Californias sustaining
mythology and the various ways in which it defines political behavior. The results
highlight two constants across the campaigns: the invocation of crisis and the
rendering of candidates as heroes. These components enable the successful if
dramatic transfer of power.
American Journal of Cultural Sociology (2013) 1, 96124.
doi:10.1057/ajcs.2012.9
Keywords: politics; California; symbolic politics; performance; myth
Introduction
On 6 August 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a performance that tested
his skills as an actor: he announced his candidacy for the California
governorship to Jay Leno and the broad viewership of The Tonight Show.
Two months later, Schwarzenegger was voted into office in the special
election that also ousted incumbent governor Gray Davis. The election was
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California theatre state
special on a number of counts, occurring ahead of schedule on the election

calendar, being the only successful statewide recall effort in California history
and sanctioning the gubernatorial aspirations of more than one hundred
individuals. Modern American politics are frequently associated with the
media circus (for example, Ryan, 1998), but the 2003 California recall
election seemed to many to be exceptional even by that standard (West, 2005).
Political activists of diverse causes and affiliations declared that the American
political system had become corrupted, possibly beyond saving (for example,
Schultz, 2001). California, with its widely touted cult of celebrity seemed to
be the most glaring case, a place where style not substance curried the
support of voters.
It is precisely style, though, that remains an enduring feature of politics. In
fact, the familiar rituals of candidates, voters and analysts are what constitute
each election, with remarkable similarity in scripts and underlying logics across
time. In any given election cycle, the populace collectively identifies those
problems that threaten their way of life, such as the economy, government
corruption or the violation of individual rights. In response, each candidate is
called upon to echo these concerns and identify how he would be able to rescue
the people from such looming crises. In this way, elections are defined by the
performances of candidates and the audience of voters, which are always made
meaningful by the local myths that sustain the polity. Without theatrics, there
would be no politics.
In this article, we use California gubernatorial elections as a case study of the
relationship between myth and performance within politics. The routine and
mundane process of selecting new leaders is invigorated by the enactment of the
peoples shared stories. In the Golden State, such performances center on crises
and heroes, a narrative of not only what threatens the state but also what
qualifies a candidate to rescue the people from those perils. What constitutes a
crisis and a hero is structured by state cosmology and communicated by media,
and these are then echoed back to the people through the sundry of performances politicians undertake during their journeys for power. Our work
draws particular inspiration from Clifford Geertz (1980, 1983), while also
building on the strong program in cultural sociology, as presented in the work of
Jeffrey Alexander (2004, 2010). We claim that all politics are theatre, that pomp
and power are mutually constituted, and that at the higher echelons of government, all politicians enact the rituals of office for the purpose of sustaining the
myth of the polity. They are not merely performing the role of politicians; they
are being politicians. As Geertz (1980, p. 136) so eloquently put it: The real is
as imagined as the imaginary.
In what follows, we first review the interdisciplinary literatures on celebrity
politicians and symbolic politics. We then elaborate on our theory of the
relationship between myth and performance with a narrative of the California
theatre state. In the latter half of the article, our analysis centers on three
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gubernatorial campaigns: those of the preeminent actor-turned-politician

Ronald Reagan (19671975), the categorical career politician Pete Wilson
(19911999) and the most recent celebrity governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
(20032010). For each, we use a sample of media reports and campaign
speeches to illustrate the ways in which they enact the California myth, thereby
exposing the underlying pattern of rituals and beliefs that constitute the
electoral process.
The Relevant Literature

The context for much of the academic discussion about performance and
politics takes place in media studies and political science and focuses on
celebrity politicians and the conflation of entertainment and politics. Such work
is relevant, not because of theoretical alignment, but because it is the dominant
narrative about figures such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Within this literature, as well as the popular press, the celebrity politician is a
source of much consternation. And while examples litter the broader American
political landscape, California is rightly associated with this phenomenon even
beyond Reagan and Schwarzenegger. A short list is illustrative here: Sonny
Bono, Clint Eastwood, George Murphy, Upton Sinclair, George Takei and
Ralph Waite have all run for elected office in the Golden State (Canon, 1990;
Cillizza, 2006). A similar trend has traditional politicians trying their hands at
entertaining with guest spots on late night talk and sketch comedy shows
(Meyer, 2002; West and Orman, 2003; Street, 2004; Baum, 2005; Stanley,
2008). There is evident concern that both types of behavior signal that we are
spiraling away from our ideals of informed and participatory democracy,
blurring the boundary between performer and politician, audience and electorate. The rules of the game seem to have been shifted by those who most
successfully straddle the boundary between politics and fame, leading to
something of a democratic existential crisis, with numerous critics calling for an
end to civic complicity in politics-as-entertainment (Postman, 1985; De Groot,
1997; Fallows, 1997; Beschloss, 1999; Street, 2004). The concern is not so
much that having been an astronaut or a singer should disqualify one from
seeking public office but rather that any additional qualifications have been
rendered irrelevant. Thus, the problem is not celebrity per se, but rather the
system that places a premium on performance to the detriment of political
dialogue (Ansolabehere et al, 1993; Meyer, 2002; Simon, 2002).
This critical perspective is characteristic of realist approaches to politics,
which view the performative aspects of politics as ephemeral distractions from
the important work of participatory democracy. Realist theories of politics trace
their lineage to diverse traditions, but they share a conception of politics that
emphasizes rational action, where any impediment to informed and logical
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voting behavior can only be a threat.1 This approach largely accounts for the
presence and relative success of celebrities (and other nonpoliticos) in the
political arena through the mobilization of amassed resources or elite status.
Celebrities pre-existing access to media gives them greater public exposure,
boosting their chances of winning irrespective of their ideas. A corollary of this
position is that wealth is paramount to winning modern elections, and
celebrities generally have a great deal of this as well (West and Orman,
2003). Realist writings also emphasize media dominance in political discourse,
which has further corrupted politics with entertainment. As a result of changing
campaign presentations, media have created a public that demands to be
entertained, not informed, by its political debates (Gamson, 1994; Barney,
2001). Voters are then led away from their actual interests in favor of flawed
candidates, preserving the status quo for those in power (Debord, 1983;
Postman, 1985; Marks and Fischer, 2002; Kellner, 2003; Weiskel, 2005).2
If we follow a strict realist perspective, then the election of Ronald Reagan
and Arnold Schwarzenegger had much to do with their prior acting roles, name
recognition and money, but little to do with California. Meanwhile, more
traditional politicians such as Pete Wilson merit no explanation; their political
success is assumed. While this account certainly resonates, the central problem
is that it creates a false dichotomy between real politics and celebrity politics,
such that celebrity politicians are cast as outliers, aberrations, or even outright
evils and voters are merely dupes. In contrast, interdisciplinary work under the
heading of symbolic politics treats style and performance as key political
elements.3 Scholars in this tradition recognize that affective and normative
representations do have an extra-individual, institutional home, and argue that
the work of making political discourse meaningful occurs through collective
interpretation (Gusfield and Michalowicz, 1984). Indeed, there is no real
political system that can be objectively singled out (Edelman, 1964, p. 21). This
Because of their nearly complete dismissal of the cultural sphere as relevant to political dialogue,
realist approaches to politics contrast most starkly with the insights of Geertz and cultural
sociology. Of course, some influential accounts (for example, Anderson, 1991; Sewell, 2005) theorize
politics in ways that assume a dynamic relationship between material and cultural concerns.
McKernans (2011) review of the literature on political celebrity finds mixed responses to the
presence of celebrities in politics. Some scholars, including those cited above, treat the
tabloidization (Turner, 2004) of politics as a clear and normatively problematic change in political
discourse. Others (for example, van Zoonen, 2005; Marsh et al, 2010) suggest that this trend creates
a more open political sphere, raising the possibility of a more truly democratic political process.
McKernan argues, as we do, that cultural sociology holds the greatest promise for properly
contextualizing celebrity and performance in politics.
The term symbolic politics is most often associated with Edelman (1964, 1971, 1988), though
Brysk (1995) also uses it. In her influential review, Berezin (1997b) distinguishes between politics
and culture and political culture when parsing similar literature. Because these latter terms take us
into broader territory, we use the term symbolic politics.
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approach allows us to highlight the symbolic themes of election cycles and the
performative work of all politicians, celebrity and traditional alike.
Symbolic approaches to politics and political campaigns challenge more
traditional assumptions about the nature of statecraft and voter preferences.
Instead of talking about interests and needs as objective facts, symbolic politics
suggests we look closely at how a polity understands what its interests and needs
are. More specifically, interests are not fixed needs but rather deeply subsumed
stories about needs, and that symbolically mobilized actors can create new
political opportunities by revealing, challenging, and changing narratives about
interests and identities (Brysk, 1995, p. 561, emphasis added). The discourse on
interests and needs is contextualized and constrained by a politys stories about
itself; the political sphere is unintelligible without taking into account its
intersections with the cultural sphere.
Scholars who adopt a symbolic approach to politics incorporate culture to
varying degrees, which Alexander (2004) captures in his distinction between
weak and strong programmatic camps. For weak symbolic politics scholars,
politicians and celebrities alike strategically deploy fame or notoriety to create
affective change, for example to raise awareness of AIDS in Africa or to bolster
a run for office. Thus, the apprehension with performance lingers. The people
largely remain dupes, still captivated by oversimplified and often glaringly
incorrect rhetoric and gestures employed by politicians. Symbols are employed
as an opiate here, not necessarily for nefarious ends so much as to salve the
politys collective psyche in the face of a difficult and complicated world.
Because the framing remains decorative, the assumption is that there is real
work and symbolic work; there is the business of power and the ritual of
power. On the other side of the dichotomy, the strong program in cultural
sociology assigns culture an autonomous role in the social world, viewing
performance and ritual as constitutive of politics, and for this reason is most
relevant for our work here. We turn now to an overview of both the earlier
contributions of Clifford Geertz and the more recent work by Jeffrey Alexander
on symbolic politics.
Myth, performance and charisma
Fittingly, Geertz is a ritualistic citation in work asserting a symbolic or cultural
dimension to politics. His work on politics-as-theatre centers on the notion that
power is symbolic (Geertz, 1980, 1983). His seminal study of nineteenth
century Bali provides a framework that promotes symbols from helpful to
fundamental in understanding political systems and processes. Geertz (1980)
detailed how the various ceremonies enacted by the pre-colonial negara (the
Balinese state) were not merely the principal occupation of the kingship, but
that these ritualized performances comprised the power of the state itself. More
specifically, power rests in societys constructed cultural myths, such that
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politics is the business of rearticulating and reaffirming cosmology, a sort of

master narrative that informs and situates political identity (Geertz, 1980, p. 15;
1983, p.143). As such, politics is a symbolic medium, which cannot be separated or parsed from real political action.
This emphasis on symbols as an integral component of politics has been
reinvigorated by work within cultural sociology broadly and the strong
program specifically, with key updates to account for the changes wrought by
modernity. Most notably, multiple scholars have offered cogent accounts of how
contemporary politics differ from previous eras. For example, civil traumas such
as the Watergate scandal, the aftermath of the Rodney King trial and the
impeachment proceedings of President Clinton indicate positively theatrical
qualities that cannot be separated from the meaning of these events (Alexander,
1984, 2003; Jacobs, 2000; Wagner-Pacifici and Sarfatti-Larson, 2001; Mast,
2006, 2012). This work also argues that these events are distinctly modern,
driven by the increasingly complex and fragmented nature of society as a whole,
and this then manifests in the public sphere in the form of de-fused social
performances and ambivalent public objects (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz,
1991; Alexander, 2004). The media, through which Americans watch events
unfold, has similarly experienced changes that further distinguish the modern
period, thereby obstructing successful performances by public actors and
facilitating further fragmentation (Jacobs, 2000). Therefore, if Americans are
increasingly clustered, segmented or otherwise ideationally estranged from
one another, it follows that the nature of politics must have shifted as well.
Our work here builds on the broad foundation that the writings of Geertz
provide, while also incorporating the more nuanced updates of the strong
program. Central to this task are the concepts of myth and performance, which
account for the structure and content, the stability and dynamism of political
action. Collective myths form the core of political life. While not meant to be
objective truth claims in the scientific sense, myths articulate what a society
believes to be true in a way that solidifies its identity, binding its members
together. A societys cosmology narrates its origins, chronicles the significant
events in its past and highlights what makes the people great (Geertz, 1980).
The myth has significance for how a society operates and which symbols define
power in that context. Thus, while myths are narratives, they are not only
narratives (Bottici, 2007).
Myths are prominent in our work in two particular ways. First, as alluded
to above, myths determine the structure of politics, that is, how power is
enacted and transferred. For participatory democracies, the rituals of campaigns
and elections are essential (Alexander, 2010). Moral legitimacy is only available
to leaders after they have engaged the people, with speeches, debates and
rallies, and won their support. Where power is attained, bestowed or won in
a different fashion, it is because the myth has determined it to be so. Dig
a little deeper, though, and myths add still more nuance, determining the
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thematic pillars upon which the contest and its outcome depend. These
narratives articulate what is important to the people what Geertz (1983,
p. 124) referred to as the animating centers of society and thereby spells
out the values, priorities and objectives successful leaders and observant media
must embody and communicate (Schwartz, 2000). There is no center of society,
no important constituency or initiative, apart from what has been culturally
erected.
Second, the collective myths are reiterated and enacted within performances.
They pervade the scripts used by politicians, set the stage of conventions and
inaugurations, and dress the performers in costumes of collective identity and
significance (Berezin, 1997a). To be in power, one must appear to be in touch
with the animating centers, which leaders demonstrate through sundry
performances. The elaborate Balinese cremation rituals emphasized the
importance of status; the ornate progresses of Queen Elizabeth exalted piety
and wisdom, but both typify performative power in different cultural contexts
(Geertz, 1983). The political leaders primary occupation is always the task of
connecting a societys remembered mythical past to its immediate future. Since
politics at the upper echelons of power are especially removed from the
everyday workings of society, the practical value of leadership at the highest
levels is secondary to the cosmological security it offers. To reiterate:
performance is power, myth made tangible.
Both Geertz (1980) and Alexander (2010) use compelling case studies to
demonstrate a dramaturgical conception of politics, the strength of which rests
in their refusal to reduce political action to manipulation. Performance does
not simply serve to (re)direct public opinion, nor does it simply stand in for
the social order. Instead, for Geertz, political performance retells the story of the
state, imbuing meaning in the political process and elevating it above the
mundane workings of the state. For Alexander, such performances are struggles
by the candidates to become collective representations, with the hope of refusing the polity that has been fractured by the tides of modernity. For both,
political performances are participatory, not simply unilateral broadcast
communications. This is especially true in the American democratic setting
where the audience is an active part of the proceedings. Performances are for the
audience, because the populace renews the state through the ritual of elections.
This inverts the assumed relationship between performance and power: Power
serve[s] pomp, not pomp power (Geertz, 1980, p. 13).
Still, nineteenth-century Bali and twenty-first century America are hardly
comparable, and a central tension between the work of Geertz and Alexander
revolves around the challenges posed by modernity.4 Geertz could assume a
more static political life and the direct involvement of a relatively homogenous
4
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See Alexander (2004) for a more detailed treatment of the historical transformations that have
produced changes in the role of ritual and performance.
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citizenry.5 Meanwhile, Alexander addresses how contemporary political

performances are more contingent and must now be facilitated by media,
which means they are more likely to be unsuccessful, particularly with a more
diverse and engaged populace. The norms of political communication have
indeed changed in response to such fragmentation and technological development; in particular, the mass media is more responsible for delivering the
symbolic representation of candidates to the electorate. As news media continue
to proliferate across print, television and online platforms, dominant political
narratives are either echoed and reinforced or even occasionally challenged and
revised, while some segments of the population can develop their own accounts
altogether (Schudson, 1995, 2008, 2009; Alexander, 2004). Yet, while these
changes constrain and free candidates in different ways vis-a`-vis both direct
participation and traditional media, the principal messages remain intact across
these technological developments. The centrality of myths for how societies
are organized also makes them remarkably durable. So, while modernity has
changed how politics is done, the fundamental structure of politics has not changed
so dramatically. Consequently, as the myth has emerged relatively unscathed by the
changes in news media and political behavior, the scripts and symbols that lend
politicians power cannot have changed substantially either. The extraordinary has
not gone out of modern politics, however much the banal may have entered; power
not only intoxicates, it still exalts (Geertz, 1983, p. 143).
In the remainder of this article, we turn our attention to California and a
sample of its most famed politicians: Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Through an analysis of their gubernatorial campaigns, we
illustrate the elements of Californias sustaining mythology, the various ways in
which it structures political behavior and how the candidates perform within
those structures. In doing so, we demonstrate the veracity of Geertzs conception
of charisma, which refutes assertions that fame or individual-level attributes are
able to explain political success, and in particular, that of Reagan and
Schwarzenegger. On the contrary, all three gubernatorial campaigns demonstrate
how constant the cosmology and therefore its permutations is across time.
Methodological Approach
Geertzs famed ethnographic method suggests that copious note-taking and
measured impressions are the preferred path to connecting performance and
power. However, cultural sociology, as a field, has demonstrated well that this is
not the exclusive path, and that thick description is inherently about research
5
In some ways, Geertz limited the applicability of his approach by choosing to focus on scenes of
public life that were pre-scripted or self-contained, which leave little room for performance and are
so markedly different from the fragmented public life of modernity (Alexander and Mast, 2006, pp.
1216).
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that is analytically informed and culturally contextualized (Alexander, 2008,

p. 159). Thus, our work also untethers Geertzs theoretical and methodological
contributions by achieving a similar thickness with a simple content analysis of
political behavior. To illustrate our claims about the California theatre state, we
collected materials from three successful gubernatorial campaigns in recent
history. We studied, first, the 1966 candidacy of the most celebrated actorturned-politician, Ronald Reagan. Our second subject is the 1990 campaign
of Pete Wilson, a categorical career politician. Finally, we look at Arnold
Schwarzenegger, the most recent former governor and another celebrity
politician, and his bid for the governorship during the 2003 special election
noted in the introduction. All three governors ran as Republicans and were
subsequently re-elected to the position.
For each candidate, we collected three types of materials: speeches, magazine
articles and newspaper articles. A sample of Reagans campaign speeches were
taken from the collection at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, while
speeches for Wilson and Schwarzenegger were located online.6 For magazine
and newspaper articles, we set the date range of interest from 1 January of the
election year to 15 January of the following year, that is, after the governor-elect
was inaugurated. We drew our magazine sample from both Newsweek and
Time, selecting all articles indexed according to the candidates name. We use
these materials qualitatively, to illustrate patterns in language, logic and
performance.
Our narrative of the theatre state emerged inductively through a content
analysis of articles from the Los Angeles Times. In the first step, we used a small
sample of newspaper articles to create a list of common themes for the three
campaigns. Secondly, we identified two categories that encompassed the various
patterns: crisis and hero. We elaborate on these terms in the next section. The
third step was to re-sample and code newspaper articles according to our
schema. To do so, we searched for all articles that contained the candidates
name, and then randomly selected two hundred of those articles for each
candidate (600 total). For each article, we recorded whether it contained
reference to a crisis or heroic trait, and a descriptor of each; any given article
could include more than one occurrence of each.7 We provide quantitative
counts of this data alongside a more qualitative use of speeches and magazine
articles. In the remainder of the article, we draw from our data to narrate the
general similarities among the three gubernatorial campaigns in terms of our
dimensions of crisis and hero.
104
Neither Pete Wilson nor Arnold Schwarzenegger have officially retired from the political arena, and
therefore have not released their campaign collections for public use.
The presence of crisis or hero was recorded as a dummy variable and as a count. We also recorded
each articles date and page number, how much of the article was specifically about the candidate of
interest, and whether the article mentioned the candidates prior occupation.
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The Myth of California

California is not a nation-state unto itself, but the American Dream comes
alive in specific ways in this state. The obvious challenge of doing an analysis
of symbolic politics in gubernatorial campaigns is that state-level races even
in very populous and economically significant states such as California are
naturally subordinate to national politics. We might expect, then, that
national themes and rhetoric would dominate state-level politics. Certainly,
this is true in the abstract, but states speak to what it means to be an
American with particular accents and nods to unique histories. In these ways,
they embellish the story of the American Dream that all politicians must
acknowledge in this country. This process of accenting the national story of
invoking the state story to tell the national one roots politics and
performance in one place and gives it shape. Without a grounded sense of
what makes California special, the American story sounds hollow to
California voters.
The history of California is rich and varied. Like many western states, its
colonial ancestry is mixed, reflecting successive waves of conquest. Its
admission to the Union in 1850 established a literal beachhead for the
expanding United States on the Pacific Ocean. California reified the promise of
Manifest Destiny, dramatically solidifying the western edge of American
territory before much of the center of the country had been settled and
upsetting the hitherto gradual expansion of the nation via contiguous states
(Gutierrez, 1997).
The Gold Rush provided the impetus for this hasty jump westward, and such
economic promise is the hallmark of the still-living myth of California as a land
of opportunity. While most prospectors failed to find the riches they sought, the
Gold Rush provided rich material from which to construct a narrative for a
diverse, innovative society (Starr, 2000). Several decades later California would
once again be painted as a land of promise for refugees from the Dust Bowl.
Steinbecks writings on the state of migrants living in camps in California have
etched images of economic ruin into the American psyche, but what has stuck
most consistently is the notion that California is a haven for dreamers and for
those who work hard. As a Frontier state in many ways the Frontier state
California represented a blank canvas onto which generations of Americans
projected their hopes and dreams. With so much space and so few established
infrastructures (social, economic or cultural), people were ostensibly free to
make something new. The ideational openness of California, coupled with
favorable climactic conditions and expansive landscapes, facilitated the
migration of the industries most associated with California today (agriculture,
entertainment and technology) into the area. Thus, the states mythical status as
an easy-living and prosperous place reflects well over one hundred years of
idealization in the Californian (and more generally American) consciousness
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(for example, Nunis, 1965). This is the basic cosmological myth that anchors
politics of the Golden State in the cultural sphere, shaping the narrative of
challenges and opportunities presented by politicians in the recurring ritual of
campaigns and elections.
Collective Crises
The gubernatorial electoral cycle is institutionalized and rule-bound, occurring
every four years, regardless of whether Californians deem a change in governance necessary, the very definition of mundane. Yet, if the prosperity of the
people was secure and government was doing its job, then elections would
come and go without much ado. Instead, the regularity of scheduled elections is
buttressed by a ritualized discourse over problems facing the state. Leading up
to elections, pollsters and pundits identify the issues, and the murmur of
discontent becomes a cacophony of anxiety over the states once-prosperous
(but now seemingly doomed) future. The first structural component of
California politics, then, is that of crisis, which transforms perennial problems
into constructed turning points for the polity.
At any historical moment, there is an indefinite number of problems plaguing the state, real or perceived, current or potential. We
identified a set of 10 recurring categories of crisis in the sample of newspaper articles across the three gubernatorial campaigns (Table 1). It is no
surprise that there is predominant concern over the state of the economy,
closely followed by worries related to partisanship and the proper
functioning of the government. Attention to rights and trends of social
disorder were also common, slightly more so than for government programs,
education and the environment. Finally, labor unions and wages, war and
other problems occupy the bottom of the list. The relatively generic nature
of this list betrays the fact that there are issues common to a variety of
polities, many of which consume our evening news programs on a routine
basis.
The election season, however, is when candidates attempt to elevate these
problems to crises, posing serious and imminent threats to a way of life. In
short, this collective identification of problems infuses elections with meaning.
The process simultaneously unites the polity by reminding them of their shared
destiny, and substantiates the election, thereby legitimating the transfer of
power from one governor to the next. Crises properly invoked invest the entire
polity in the outcome of the election, spurring interest and action where
otherwise there might be indifference and indolence. Much like the deep play
Geertz (1973, pp. 412453) describes in his seminal article on Balinese
cockfighting, the more the stakes are raised, the more completely involving
and filled with cosmological import an election becomes (cf. Reed, 2006,
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Table 1: Distribution of collective crises, by candidate (column per cent in parentheses)
Economy
Partisanship
Government
Social disorder
Civil rights
Govt. programs
Education
Environment
Work and labor
War
Other
Total
Reagan
Wilson
Schwarzenegger
Total
29
(17.1)
19
(11.2)
23
(13.5)
21
(12.4)
14
(8.2)
14
(8.2)
20
(11.8)
1
(0.6)
13
(7.6)
12
(7.1)
4
(2.4)
23
(11.9)
20
(10.3)
34
(17.5)
23
(11.9)
28
(14.4)
18
(9.3)
10
(5.2)
25
(12.9)
6
(3.1)
1
(0.5)
5
(2.6)
40
(33.1)
30
(24.8)
8
(6.6)
3
(2.5)
5
(4.1)
5
(4.1)
6
(5.0)
10
(8.3)
7
(5.8)
1
(0.8)
6
(5.0)
92
(19.0)
69
(14.3)
65
(13.4)
48
(9.9)
47
(9.7)
37
(7.6)
36
(7.4)
36
(7.4)
26
(5.4)
14
(2.9)
15
(3.1)
170
193
121
484
pp. 160165).8 Without state crises, there can be no savior, no renewal of the
myth, no new political opportunity. Sounding the alarm is part of the ritual, an
integral component of plot development that builds tension and enriches the
otherwise pedestrian nature of elections.
The shift from problem to crisis is accomplished in the context of performances.
During an election year, the candidates demonstrate that they are in touch with the
animating centers of society through the resonance they provide of what the
election issues are and how each threatens the state by invoking the myth (Geertz,
1983). In this way, candidates are not necessarily creating a discourse of fear or
hoping to distract the citizenry from the real issues (cf. Edelman, 1964; Furedi,
2007). Rather, they are performing the role of being in charge of what matters to
the people, struggling to become collective representations for the people; they are
becoming politicians (Alexander, 2004, 2010).
Because the rough narrative and structural elements of elections are stable
from cycle to cycle, the invocation of crises is a predictable and essential part of
the electoral ritual. Thus, paradoxically, crises do not necessarily indicate a
8
We thank Anonymous Reviewer 1 for pointing out this connection.

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cultural breach, though candidates may present them as such.9 This

performance is accomplished with the help of mass media that allow election
coverage to dominate news stories, particularly as Election Day draws near;
for the most part, the populace consumes this information as a matter of
course. Within each cycle, there is certainly room for dissent from and
alternatives to the candidates claims, as either media or members of the
citizenry make different demands about which problems should be treated as
crises. Those that saturate news reports and campaign speeches across cycles,
which bring the different actors into the same performance, are tied to the
more deep-seated and durable state myths. Two types of crisis the economy
and partisanship dominate California gubernatorial elections, accounting for
one-third of all crises in our sample. We now examine these two crises in
greater detail, demonstrating how the candidates make each dramatically
meaningful through performance, interpreting them through the lens of
Californias mythology.
Economic cracks and woes

Economic problems in California regularly took the form of lost jobs or
industries, unbalanced budgets, or out-of-control government spending. Reagan
began one speech paying homage to California, exalting the state before delving
into the troubles that threatened it. Cracks have appeared in our economy, he
began. Then with a bit of theatrical flourish, he elaborated: Im holding a
catsup bottle a pretty commonplace item. But, when the Secretary of Labor
and our own state government had finished their experiments in reform y there
were 28 million fewer of these manufactured in one plant in Oakland, and that
meant lay-offs for 200 employees (Reagan, 1966c). He presents a narrative of
crisis in a classical way, highlighting the first signs of problems cracks in the
economy, then juxtaposing that statement with concrete examples of how the
current administration had caused job losses in California. Reagan regularly
tied employment to the overall well-being of the state, a particularly
conservative variant of the American myth: when Californians didnt work,
California didnt work.
9
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Masts (2006, 2012) work on political performance and scandal examines the contextualized,
dynamic nature of political performance as it unfolds. From this model, crises are highly
unpredictable moments of perceived cultural rupture. A candidates response is limited by his
ability to command the narrative that the populace will find acceptable in light of both attacks from
opponents and his own past actions. Crisis understood thusly alters the political narrative in
idiosyncratic ways very much embedded in the context of each individual election. We use the term
crisis to describe a structural component of the electoral process, which is more predictable and
present over time. Within the framework we employ, the processes Mast describes may well be
occurring.
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Schwarzenegger (2003a) sounded the same notes when he argued that state
officials had not met their obligations to the people in a statement on Labor Day:
Because of the higher taxes, over-regulation and the crushing burden of
workers compensation costs that our elected officials have put on the
books, more and more of our businesses are being forced to cut back, lay
off, shut down or move out of the state altogether. Thats a direct threat to
the ability of Californians to have a job, raise a family and build a better
life for their children.
The accusation not only helps citizens reach the conclusion that they need new
elected officials, but also binds them together as Californians who work and
have dreams for their families.
A related perennial issue is that of the budget. In all three campaigns,
candidates assailed the budget setting process and constructed it as a failure of
leadership, once again justifying the election. In 1990, a deadlock between outgoing governor Deukmejian and the state legislature had left the state without
an approved budget. In calling for a solution to the crisis, Wilson proclaimed,
There (should be) no talk of new taxes until there has been achieved what
should in fact first occur basic budget reform, fundamental restructuring of
the state budget (Decker and Stall, 1990). Reagan articulated these same
themes in a televised speech in February of 1966, railing against the overspending of the current administration: The budget is more than twice as costly
as it was eight years ago, and its characterized by sloppiness, incompetency and
a tendency to sell out the future our future (Reagan, 1966a). Likewise, the
dismal state of the economy in 2003 was one of the oft-stated reasons for the
recall vote on Gray Davis; Schwarzeneggers larger share of economy-related
articles show his efforts to mirror the peoples concern back to them.
Although economic problems were pervasive themes for the three candidates,
the actual threats (should all the jobs leave California or the budget go
unbalanced) remained vague. Instead, references were made to building better
lives and a shared future, important components of the broader California
myth that looks towards progress. This vagueness is effective in bonding the
citizenry precisely because the crises are still tied (however tenuously) to what
the society holds dear. For residents of the Golden State economic stability
provides freedom and fosters innovation, pre-requisites for making dreams
come true. These prized virtues can be traced to the states cosmology as a
Frontier, evoking the autonomy of gold miners and the creativity of Hollywood.
Performing on both sides of the aisle
If economic stability is a pre-requisite for progress, then cooperation within the
states diverse population is how that progress is achieved. For this reason,
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California politics operates as though it resides at the center of the political

spectrum. Although California proudly imagines itself as a blue state within
the milieu of national elections, voters have not been shy about electing a
Republican governor. Indeed, what seems to be most threatening is partisanship
and dangerous ideological extremes on either side. What we discover is that
the candidates acknowledged these crises by running as moderates, and they
ritualistically reviled the partisan politics that had put Californias bright future
in doubt (for example, Schnur, 2003). In short, [they sought] victory not for
political expediencies or for pride of party but to restore morality and dignity to
government (Reagan, 1966b).
A common enemy in the campaigns for morality and dignity was cronyism,
taking the spoils system of administration change to its dangerous extreme and
reeking of partisanship. The implication is that partisan governance shows a
disdain for ordinary Californians, mythical creatures which seem to represent
almost everyone in the state, but who are never clearly defined. For example, in
his address to the California State Republican Convention, Reagan argued that
the Democratic administration made nonpartisan career public servants
virtually useless in many instances by political hacks and cronies serving
above them with no experience, or no knowledge of the departments they were
supposed to administer (Reagan, 1966b). Wilson employed the strategy of
pinpointing cronyism more selectively throughout his campaign, noting the
foibles of Democrats such as John Van de Kamp, an early contender for the
Democratic gubernatorial nomination, while also avoiding direct criticism of
the sitting Republican governors leadership. Similarly, Schwarzenegger assailed
the government for not providing a way out of a budget deadlock similar to the
one Wilson encountered in 1990. According to each candidate, these problems
were too big to be solved by one party. Both sides would need to work together
to move the state forward, and the candidates pledged to do so.
Political platforms and affiliations seem to be important props in the
production of non-partisanship. Media commonly emphasized when Wilson
and Schwarzenegger took positions that were contrary to the Republican base.
For example, both candidates campaigned as supportive of reproductive rights,
and this was taken as evidence that neither was too Republican to represent the
people (for example, Spivak, 1990).10 In contrast, Reagans earlier affiliations
with conservative extremist groups such as the John Birch Society and his
support for 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater became red
flags for the media (Bergholz, 1966; Los Angeles Times, 1966a, b). Reagans
campaign, therefore, made it a priority to create space between him and these
affiliations by emphasizing both the redeeming quality of those affiliations as
well as how Reagans political stances had become more moderate. In these
10
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Reagans first gubernatorial campaign was years before Roe v. Wade overturned state laws banning
abortion. The civil rights issue of Reagans day was free speech on college campuses.
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examples, each candidate clearly showed deference for the problems with
partisanship. Geertz (1983, p. 123) reminds us that It is a sign, not of popular
appeal or inventive craziness but of being near the heart of things.
The repertoire of crisis for California gubernatorial candidates is familiar. The
economy and corruption, the environment and crime, radicals and civil rights
violations, all pose threats to the citizenrys way of life. In a specific electoral
cycle, some issues may receive more attention from the candidates and media
than others. However, two things remain unchanged across elections: first,
whether an issue can plausibly become a crisis is determined by its symbolic
value within the politys myth; second, crises work as pillars to uphold the
importance of democratic elections and support a collective consciousness.
Candidates in the Golden State talk about earthquakes and fires, not hurricanes
or ice storms; they claim partisanship is stealing the vote from ordinary
Californians; and they denounce fiscal irresponsibility as a threat to progress
and the future of the state. With each election, California and its people are recreated.
I Can Save You: Candidates as Heroes

Our second structural component of California politics seems to follow
naturally after the identification of crises: a candidate must become a hero,
convincing voters that he is the only person able to avert the danger and secure
the road to glory. The hero is the solution, the means by which California will
be able to move forward. Moreover, the hero figure conveys the fact that
Californians are looking for a particular type of representative not just
anybody can govern, according to the myth. The role asks that candidates
embody a certain ideal, being characterized by nobility and popular appeal in
addition to having the skill set necessary to solve problems. Each must resonate
with the people, and also highlight the ways in which he is uniquely qualified for
the job.
In the necessarily dramatic rhetoric of campaigns, the notion that successful
candidates must be heroic is appropriate. Moreover, as with crises, what
constitutes heroism is initially broad and nonspecific before it is customized for
the time and place of the drama, tailored by the shared cosmology. Table 2
presents counts for seven categories of heroism identified in our sample of Los
Angeles Times articles. A total of 272 instances of candidate-evaluation
occurred across 191 of the articles. This count does not necessarily reflect which
qualities each candidate is thought to embody, but rather which qualities were
relevant to the discussion. It signals the dimensions on which the candidates
were being judged, and candidates used speeches to communicate how they
measured up, able to save.
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Table 2: Distribution of heroic qualities, by candidate (column per cent in parentheses)
Right ideas
Character
Affiliations
Outsider
Popular
Leader
Unifier
Total
Reagan
Wilson
Schwarzenegger
Total
20
(16.4)
23
(18.9)
19
(15.6)
19
(15.6)
18
(14.7)
11
(9.0)
12
(9.8)
32
(45.7)
12
(17.1)
12
(17.1)
3
(4.3)
1
(1.4)
7
(10.0)
3
(4.3)
17
(21.3)
14
(17.5)
10
(12.5)
15
(18.8)
13
(16.3)
9
(11.3)
2
(2.5)
69
(25.4)
49
(18.0)
41
(15.1)
37
(13.6)
32
(11.8)
27
(9.9)
17
(6.3)
122
70
80
272
The most frequently referenced type of heroism was the candidates proposed
strategies for addressing the problems facing the state, accounting for just over a
quarter of the total. This reflects a reciprocal relationship whereby the
dramatization of crises necessitates heroic ideas for solving them, drawing the
candidates closer still to the animating centers. Second among the heroic traits
were candidates character and their affiliations, together comprising a third
(33.1 per cent) of the total, reflecting the peoples hope that elected officials will
lead exemplary lives and surround themselves with intelligent and respectable
counsel. Third, another quarter of the total focused on both how much of a
political outsider a candidate was and his popularity. Finally, a hero is a strong
leader and able to unite warring political factions, two traits that make up the
final portion of the total. In sum, these attributes paint a picture of the
governors role in the state; without these traits, a candidate would be
unqualified for the position and, more importantly, incapable of saving the state
from its imminent demise.
The data show that each candidates source of heroism varies, much in the
same way that certain crises were more or less dramatized across time. The ofttold story of Schwarzenegger following the mold cast by Reagan is primarily
true in terms of popularity and being outsiders, suggesting that their existing
fame influenced the media narrative. As we can see though, this did not obviate
the importance of policy and solutions, and as we demonstrate below, both
candidates painted themselves as ordinary Californians, not celebrities. Wilson,
as the career politician, is predictably evaluated more according to whether he
had the right ideas about how to run the state and address its problems. The
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myth allows both paths to be construed as heroic, especially when enacted in

performance. In the remainder of this section, we look at two persistent and
dominant dimensions of California heroism in greater detail. The first is the
notion that the best politicians are not politicians at all, and that salvation can
only be achieved by outsiders who are bold enough to change how government
is run. The second heroic trait we examine is that of character, which paints a
picture of candidates who are trustworthy, ethical and exemplars to the people.
We, the people: Against politicians in politics
In a country, state and election where democracy is not only practiced but
enshrined, the allure of change and outsiders can be particularly strong. In the
Californian cultural landscape, any party or individual too long in office comes
under suspicion of having violated the ideal of rule by the people, in principle if
not in deed. Thus, a promise of change (within certain parameters) can become
enough to make a hero, even sometimes trumping the logic of experience. In a
state so proudly anti-establishment, the specter of having become part of the
status quo can be damning.
Across the three candidacies, politics and politicians were pejorative terms.
Politicians were routinely blamed for the state of affairs for bending to the will
of (undefined) special interests, while ignoring the needs of the people. In a
similar fashion, candidates regularly portrayed the existing officials as unwilling
to compromise with the other party, reminding the electorate again of the perils
of partisan bickering. The proffered solution was to elect a non-politician into
office. Schwarzenegger dramatized this theme most vigorously. In addressing
why he chose to run for governor, he explained I came to the conclusion that
even though there are great sacrifices to make, I felt in the end it is my duty to
jump in the racey Im the most unique candidate because Im an outsider
(CNN, 2003). Schwarzenegger frequently tried to strike a populist tone: I know
the people of California want better leadership, they want great leadership. On
the eve of the 2003 special election, he said, Tomorrow, it is all about the
people versus the governmentyIt is the people versus the politicians. So make
sure you go out and vote (Nicholas, 2003). In a more direct but equally
dramatic way, Reagan employed his line, I am no politician, to make common
sense and the sovereignty of the people cornerstones of his campaign. Although
it is easy to accept the two actors as outsiders, we should not forget that Reagan
had already given his landmark televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater
two years earlier, and Schwarzenegger married into the quintessential political
family in the mid-1980s. Outsiders they were not, but they enacted the myth
nonetheless.
Even Pete Wilson, who was rarely cast as a political outsider, separated
himself from his opponent by raising the antidemocratic specter of special
interests. Indeed, Wilson made much of his immunity to the lure of special
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interests, criticizing Diane Feinstein for accepting contributions that might cause
a conflict of interest while defending his own record on the same subject. By
posing as non-politicians, all three candidates asserted that they were
impervious to the enticements that corrupt the system, making them uniquely
qualified heroes.
The stuff heroes are made of
Based on the content of newspaper coverage, the character of politicians was
equally important as the issues in their platforms. Much was made of the
personal qualities of each, particularly the degree to which they were likable,
sensible, fair or hardworking, as well as whether they ran clean or dirty
campaigns. What constitutes character is difficult to pin down, however, and
media portrayed each candidate in somewhat different lights.
Even while Schwarzenegger was dogged by allegations of womanizing and
sexual harassment during the 2003 campaign, his status as a devoted husband
and (to a lesser extent) father also garnered sizable media attention (Brownfield,
2003; Eller and Cieply, 2003). Further, he was generally considered easy to get
along with and pleasant (Lopez, 2003). Somewhat similarly, Reagan was
portrayed as affable and quick-witted, with a good sense of humor (Newsweek,
1966). In addition to these positive personality traits, he was reported to have
been a committed delegator, interested in finding the best talent to fill positions
(Beck, 1966). Wilson was not considered particularly charismatic during the
1990 campaign, particularly when compared with Democratic opponent Diane
Feinstein. Instead, Wilsons more conventional leadership qualities were
emphasized as media coverage focused on his displays of prudence and caution
when making decisions, as well as his ability to listen before deciding on a
course of action (Stall, 1990a, b, c). In the period between the election and his
inauguration, Wilson was described as hardworking and, when compared with
outgoing governor Deukmejian, warm (Carroll and Whiting, 1991). At the
same time, Wilson made his toughness, especially with reference to crime, a key
element of his platform, and his status as a former Marine received attention as
well (Carroll and Whiting, 1991).
The common theme of relatively humble beginnings ties all three candidates
together. Reagan and Wilson were both born in the Midwest into middle class
families; Schwarzenegger famously came to the United States with absolutely
nothing, as he put it, to pursue an acting career (Nicholas et al, 2003). These
life histories are used to symbolize the hard work, motivation and perseverance
of the candidates, further buttressing the general discourse over character. More
importantly, the individual stories are used to reiterate the generalized myth of
California itself, born as a Frontier, developing its rich natural resources to
become a leader. Indeed, the performances allow voters to imagine all three
candidates, heeding the call to Go West, young man.
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The politician-as-hero is not the ubiquitous form of power across time and
space. Geertz (1983) demonstrated, for example, that Victorian England
conferred power through elaborate progresses that exalted the new leader
as chosen, a born ruler, and Moroccan power insisted that rulers appear omnipresent and able to defend their control of the territory. But for Californians,
power is about a brand of bravery, in the Hollywood tradition of Indiana Jones
saving the ancient relic and the beautiful girl, that involves a willingness to risk
everything for the pursuit of noble principles. The powerful, then, are
recognized as flawed but not disqualified; indeed, they are mythically justified
diamonds in the rough.
The Myth Made Real: Inauguration Day

If speeches are the vehicles of political ideas and stages the venues, then
the inauguration ceremony is the pinnacle of political theatre. The rich
ornamentation and complex rituals of inaugurations betray just how
theatrical the political process is. The very thing that the elaborate mystique
of court ceremonial is supposed to conceal that majesty is made, not born
is demonstrated by it (Geertz, 1983, p. 124). In the grandeur of the State
Capitol rotunda, with a mixed audience of politicians, celebrities and
ordinary citizens, each governor-elect takes the oath of office and is officially
seated in power.
The centerpiece of each ceremony is the inaugural address, and through their
oratory, the new governors make clear what the recently finished election has
been about and how to move forward towards the bright future. The new
governors praise the people for choosing the correct hero, which is evidence that
the voters understood and chose to avert the looming dangers ahead. Inaugural
speeches are also conciliatory gestures, invitations to those who voted against
the governor to join in making Californias future for the betterment of all. To
accomplish these feats, the speeches traverse the familiar myths performed
during the course of the campaigns.
First, all three governors used their speeches to remind the people of the
challenges ahead and the work that must be done to insure Californias
continued progress. However, for the most part, they did so obliquely. Reagan
(1967) noted, The path we will chart is not an easy one. It demands much of
those chosen to govern, but also from those who did the choosing.
Schwarzenegger (2003b) sounded a similar tone, noting the crises that had
led to the recall effort and promising broad changes under his direction: In
recent years, Californians have lost confidence. Theyve felt that the actions of
their government did not represent the will of the people. This election was not
about replacing one man or one party. It was about changing the entire political
climate of our state. Wilson (1991) was more optimistic in his inaugural
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address, employing the state capitol building as a metaphor for the changes
ahead:
For more than a century it sheltered the peoples representatives, until the
1970s, when it nearly collapsed from age and neglect. We didnt replace
our Capitol; we restored it to new luster. y [E]ven more than the house of
government, the process of government needs structural renovation if we
are to keep faith with those who sent us to Sacramento.
Second, without fail, the governors positioned themselves as heroes, called to
duty by the citizens of California. They accomplished this primarily by signaling
an implied break with the past and eschewing partisan rhetoric. Schwarzenegger
(2003b) approached this early in his speech and very directly, I enter this office
beholden to no one except you, my fellow citizens. I pledge my governorship to
your interests, not to special interests. y I want people to know that my
administration is not about politics. It is about saving California. Wilson
(1991) argued that the ideological differences that had divided the state were
insubstantial compared with the features shared by all Californians: We are
Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives, Moderates and Liberals. Yet for all
that might appear to divide us on the surface, core values of far greater
importance unite us. We care about one another and about California. We share
a passionate belief in the Democratic process and in the future of California.
Reagan (1967) was the most abstract, discussing the foundational principles of
democratic government, thereby contextualizing Californias greatness with
that of the United States: Government is the peoples business, and every man,
woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid. With
all the profound wording of the Constitution, probably the most meaningful
words are the first three, We, the People.
Third, and most importantly, each candidate spoke of California as a place of
dreams and dreams coming true. Reagan (1967) did so even while maintaining
the somber tone of his speech:
California, with its climate, its resources and its wealth of young,
aggressive, talented people, must never take second place. We can provide
jobs for all our people who will work and we can have honest government
at a price we can afford. Indeed, unless we accomplish this, our problems
will go unsolved, our dreams unfulfilled and we will know the taste of
ashes.
Both Schwarzenegger and Wilson were sunnier in tone. Wilson (1991)
culminated a discussion of the importance of education by saying, Let the
growth of this greatest state be measured, not just in gray demographics, but in
the bright colors of our childrens dreams. Let Californias rich valleys produce a
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bumper crop of leadership to ennoble and energize America in the great

adventure of the 21st century. Finally, Schwarzenegger (2003b) closed his
speech by speaking effusively about California as a place of optimism,
highlighting his own immigrant status:
I see California as the Golden Dream by the sea. Perhaps some think this is
fanciful or poetic, but to an immigrant like me who, as a boy, saw Soviet
tanks rolling through the streets of Austria. To someone like me who came
here with absolutely nothing and gained absolutely everything, it is not
fanciful to see this state as a Golden Dream.
The purpose of the inauguration and its attendant speeches is, very simply, to
finalize the transfer of power to the new governor. This is not merely ritual. The
symbolic value of the rotunda, the homage paid to bi-partisanship and the
pronounced deference to the voters situate the governor within Californias
broader cultural landscape, and in so doing, affirms the sustaining myths of the
people. The lavish speeches and ceremonies transform men into governors
(Alexander, 2010). The most important element, subtly referenced throughout,
is how that transformation occurs: through democratic election, reflecting the
will of the voters, ordained by the people. Therefore, although the inauguration
is the most obvious instance of political theatre, it bestows power only after the
longer and more subtle rituals of the campaigns and election. Once in power,
governors are never far from a potential fall from grace after all, new elections
occur every four years and so even as they go about attending to the backstage
and often unromantic elements of politics, they must also remain near the
heart of things.
Eureka!: Lessons from California

The marquee icons of the Golden State are too familiar: the Gold Rush,
Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wine Country, Yosemite, the Golden Gate Bridge
and, of course, the coastline of the Pacific Ocean. These classic symbols of the
state belong to Californians; they ground their collective identity in a particular
place. The gubernatorial electoral cycle is no less mythical, and it is rife with
deeply symbolic action that situates Californians in a similar way. Election
politics are a collection of elaborate pageants through which candidates embody
and reflect the states cosmology in order to demonstrate the will of the people.
In so doing, they make it real. The genesis for this research can be found in both
the spectacle of California elections and the work of cultural sociologists on
myth and performance. It is prudent, then, to return to these points and consider
how our work here might contribute to the current literatures.
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The first lesson, particularly for the alarmists, is that there are no issues in
California politics apart from those that exist at the animating centers of society.
These are remarkably stable over time, precisely because the myths are not
remade every election; they are only reconsecrated. And because it is myth and
performance that constitute politics, there can be no large material differences
between successful candidates. In our work, wealth, status, communication
savvy or prestige may offer explanatory leverage, but the account is incomplete
without the cultural structures. Politicians, then, may be more or less successful
in their struggles to become collective representations, but they are not free to
rewrite the conventions of the story. If we follow this line of reasoning, it
becomes tempting to say that political victors are those who do a better job at
capturing the myth. Our data, however, do not provide that sort of explanatory
leverage; only a comparative study of election winners and losers would allow
us to address that empirical question. Nevertheless, we would suggest that the
front runners of a given election are not discernibly different in their
performances, and it is fairly obvious that neither Gary Coleman (of Diffrent
Strokes) nor Mary Carey (an adult film star) could perform heroism in a
compelling way during the 2003 special election.
In many ways, California election politics are merely American election
politics zoomed in. For both, the central cosmological truth that dictates
political symbols and rhetoric is that power is attained democratically. This
democratic ideal insists that the most important rituals occur before the
politician is even sworn in. A second lesson, then, is that we can understand
all of the trappings of elections through a lens that interprets how practice
accommodates power. Collective understandings about how leaders rise to
power account for both the form and the substance of the political performances. We would expect that the actors and settings involved in the
performance will vary based on the system of government in place, and that
the specific costumes, props and lines will be tailored even more specifically to
the national and local myths. For example, the directorial system of Switzerland
would structure politics differently than the presidential system of the United
States, and national politics would be colored by broader Swiss and American
identities, which would be embellished by the more particular stories about
Zurich and California for the canton and state political rituals.
The link between pomp and power is similarly informative when considering
the role of the media broadly and technological changes specifically. Given the
inexorably complex relationship between media and elections, Alexander
(2010) rightly conceptualizes media as an essential component of modern
politics. While the polity could directly observe the elaborate rituals in
nineteenth-century Bali, the vastly different context today has turned journalists, newscasters, correspondents and pundits into mediators, occupying a
unique position between the actors (politicians) and the audience (voters). Yet,
while the technologies carrying the narrative of the polity have multiplied over
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time, the narrative endures. Californians define their cosmological location in

terms of opportunity, progress and democracy, and both speeches and news
articles serve to narrate those myths.
Finally, the case of California also presents a paradox: the state and its people
are sustained by the unifying power of a particular myth, but the myth is powerful
in its simplicity, in its lack of detail. Political campaigns are performances in the
style of commedia dellarte, with well-known stock figures made real in the person
of the politician. We observe this in the perennially vague references to the
consequences of the failing economy, in the formless nature of the ordinary citizen
that campaigns target, and in the elusive though still bright future of California.
Meanwhile, the actual machinations of the campaign have grown impossibly
minute and complicated, mirroring in some ways the obsessively detailed rituals
Geertz (1980) highlighted as essential to the maintenance of power in Bali. Indeed,
outside of the intricately interdependent social history of the small kingdoms of
Bali, the increasingly fragmented cultural strata requires the political cosmology to
become more abstract. In a thoroughly modern social landscape in which
awareness of multiple identities is the norm, there is not enough cosmological
connective tissue to build anything other than a political straw man, leaving much
of the interpretive work to individuals. If simpler societies can adopt realism as
their artistic mode, paying attention to minute details, leadership in fragmented
societies is more prone to cubist or abstract styles and paints with a broader brush.
The electorate is able to recognize itself and its stories in their respective styles, and
so the performance succeeds.
In November 2010, California survived yet another gubernatorial election
cycle, in which Republican Meg Whitman battled the Democrat, former
governor Jerry Brown. When the campaigns were in full-swing, the problems
that faced the state were obvious to all Californians: the economy was once
again on the precipice of failure; there was fiery debate over whether
undocumented immigrants were destroying their way of life; and civil rights
lingered in the collective consciousness as court battles addressed gay marriage.
Indeed, it seemed as though the election could not come soon enough to save the
state from ruin. Both Whitman and Brown were carefully probed by media for
any radical policies or symptoms of weakness, while they recited lines that could
have also been uttered by Reagan, Wilson or Schwarzenegger. Once the election
was over, Jerry Browns (2011) inaugural comments reminded Californians of
what all the spectacle was about:
[The inauguration] is a sacred and special ritual that affirms that the
people are in charge and that elected officials are given only a limited time
in which to perform their appointed tasks. y Every Californian is heir to
some form of powerful tradition, some history of overcoming challenges
much more daunting than those we face today y stories of courage
abound. And it is not over.
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119
Essary and Ferney
California emerged intact, even as the trials still loomed ahead, and the state
basks in the brightness of its future and its citizens, though the details are
obscured. The myth of California was made real, once again.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Suzanne Shanahan and Jeffrey C. Alexander for
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. The anonymous reviewers at
American Journal of Cultural Sociology also provided valuable suggestions for
improving the argument and organization of our work. We express our
gratitude to Jennifer Staton and Abigail Meyer for their work collecting and
processing data.
About the Authors

Elizabeth Helen Essary is an assistant professor of sociology at Pepperdine
University. She earned her PhD from Duke University in 2008. Her research
looks at nationalism and the state, with an emphasis on culture and mobilization. She is currently working on a project that considers the legacy of the
Civil War for contemporary secession movements in America.
Christian Ferney is Student Programs Manager at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
at Duke University. His work focuses on nationalism and global cultural
translation. He earned is PhD from Duke University in 2009. His dissertation is
titled, Particular Universality: Science, Culture, and Nationalism in Australia,
Canada, and the United States, 19151960.
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Original Article

Pomp and power, performers and

Social Science Division, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway,

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113 American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

special on a number of counts, occurring ahead of schedule on the election

Essary and Ferney

gubernatorial campaigns: those of the preeminent actor-turned-politician

The Relevant Literature

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

Essary and Ferney

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

politics is the business of rearticulating and reaffirming cosmology, a sort of

Essary and Ferney

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

citizenry.5 Meanwhile, Alexander addresses how contemporary political

Essary and Ferney

that is analytically informed and culturally contextualized (Alexander, 2008,

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

The Myth of California

Essary and Ferney

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

We thank Anonymous Reviewer 1 for pointing out this connection.

Essary and Ferney

cultural breach, though candidates may present them as such.9 This

Economic cracks and woes

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

Essary and Ferney

California politics operates as though it resides at the center of the political

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113

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California theatre state

I Can Save You: Candidates as Heroes

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American Journal of Cultural Sociology

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myth allows both paths to be construed as heroic, especially when enacted in

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American Journal of Cultural Sociology

California theatre state

The Myth Made Real: Inauguration Day

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bumper crop of leadership to ennoble and energize America in the great

Eureka!: Lessons from California

Essary and Ferney

r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2049-7113