Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.

Politics now comes in a box. Television has changed how politicians present and how the public receives. Television politics has seduced America. During the last 50 years, TV has produced a complex array of emotions that lie deeper than individual attitudes and make the burdens of citizenship increasingly taxing.

Roderick Hart suggests that this accounts for current political alienation. Recent studies reveal a growing sullenness about citizen participation. Watching it through a strategic lens produces a cultural cynicism that saps the body politic by making the miracle of self-government seem like a sham.

Hart charges TV with revolutionizing politics by encouraging people to feel good about feeling bad. He wonders why Americans consider themselves knowledgeable about politics, but ignorant about governance, and why they act righteous when they do not vote. The simple fact is that people feel things about politics; the complicated fact is that they are confused about what they feel because they distrust politics. Hart terms this alienation and confusion a political eclipse. The very concept of politics, the purpose of government, is threatening to slip away. According to Hart, Americans are vaguely aware of this and, worst of all, do not care about the loss.

Over the years, commentators have suggested ways to improve TV politics. Hart divides those with solutions into six groups:

* The Socratics, who propose deliberative opinion polls, televising the House and Senate proceedings, and regularizing presidential press conferences. Hart terms these proposals "testosteronal in nature," designed to counteract the "soft politics" that produce excessive chumminess among the nation's elites, and argues that they are inadequate.

* The Epicureans, who favor more sociable formats that draw individuals into the public realm by humanizing political options. However, these strategies merely usher in distorting politics of intimacy when people need to be more abstemious.

* The Deweyites, who champion in-depth reporting...