The Culture Code (24 page)

In the discovery sessions for the presidency, party affiliation was unimportant. What we sought was how Americans imprinted the archetype of the president.

When I was a little kid, I remember watching a speech by John F. Kennedy with my mother. She told me he was the president of the United States, but I didn’t really know what that meant. At the time, I thought the entire world was contained within the United States. What I noticed about
JFK
was that when he spoke you wanted to pay attention. Back then, I didn’t like to watch the news or anything other than cartoons, but I watched President Kennedy. I don’t remember what he talked about that day, but I remember feeling really good afterward.

—a thirty-year-old man

My fifth-grade teacher had this huge picture of President Reagan hanging in the room. When we said the pledge, we were supposed to look at the flag, but I looked at him instead. He just seemed so calm and so powerful. I knew he was taking care of our country.

—an eighteen-year-old woman

My first memory of the presidency was listening to FDR’s voice on the radio. Things were pretty bad for my family (the whole country, really) back then, but I always felt better after I heard
FDR
speak. There was something about the things he told us that made me feel like everything was going to turn out okay.

—a sixty-two-year-old man

My most powerful memory of the presidency was working on the first Reagan campaign here in New Jersey. One day, the future president delivered a speech before the New Jersey primary and I was awestruck at his vision and his sense of purpose. He knew what was wrong and he knew how to fix it. After the speech, I got the chance to shake his hand, and I got this incredible feeling of power just being in his presence.

—a forty-year-old woman

When I was in elementary school, I had to do a report on a president. Up to that point, I didn’t care very much about anything to do with government. I’m not sure I could have told you who the current president was. Since I had to do something, I picked up a book about Abraham Lincoln and it literally changed my life. When I read about what this man did for his country and how he stuck to his convictions because he knew America needed it, I was awestruck. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been involved in public service at the local level in various ways and I know this is because of what I learned about President Lincoln.

—a fifty-one-year-old man

Phrases like “When he spoke you wanted to pay attention,” “I knew he was taking care of our country,” “He knew what was wrong and he knew how to fix it,” and “I was awestruck” created a picture of what we want in our presidents. We want someone with a highly developed vision who makes us pay attention when he speaks. We want someone with a strong reptilian side who can take care of our country. We want someone who can help us rebel against our problems and lead us into the Promised Land because he knows what is wrong and how to fix it.

We don’t want a father figure. We want a biblical figure.

The Culture Code for the American presidency is
MOSES
.

This might come as a surprise to those who don’t follow any organized religion, but if you strip away the religious components of the story of Moses, you’ll see that he represents the Code for the American presidency aptly: a rebellious leader of his people with a strong vision and the will to get them out of trouble.

Moses also made his people believe they could do the impossible. This is a skill great presidents have possessed, beginning with George Washington himself. Here was a man who led a ragtag, ill-prepared army to victory over the vastly superior British military. Abraham Lincoln convinced America that it could overcome slavery and civil war. Franklin Roosevelt made Americans believe they could conquer the Depression. Ronald Reagan imbued us with a vision of greatness when we had fallen into despair. These men did this with more than rhetoric or idealism (in fact, idealism is a critical flaw in a president, as we learned with Jimmy Carter). They inspired us to act by convincing us to share their transcendental vision. They gave us directions out of the desert and into the Promised Land.

But we don’t expect our presidents to be ideal humans touched by a divine hand, like the biblical Moses. We don’t want our presidents to be perfect—most important, we don’t want them to consider themselves perfect. As we’ve already seen, Americans have strong apprehensions about perfection. We are culturally adolescent, and we expect our president to be adolescent as well. We expect him to be connected to the American soul, and that means rarely doing things right the first time. Instead, we expect him to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and be better for it. Clinton’s presidency was riddled with mistakes (from the botched national health plan to Whitewater to the Monica Lewinsky scandal), but, according to an
ABC
News/
Washington Post
poll, his approval ratings at the end of his second term were higher than those of any post–World War II president, including Ronald Reagan. When a president can maintain high approval ratings after an impeachment hearing, it is obvious that we aren’t looking for perfection.

The Code for the American president is very consistent with the Code for America itself (which we will explore in the next chapter). This makes perfect sense, as a culture could not function effectively if its model for a leader conflicted with its most fundamental Code.

Canadians, for instance, seek leaders who are capable of maintaining the culture. As mentioned earlier, the Canadian Code for Canada is TO
KEEP
. This Code evolved from the severe Canadian winters. Canadians learned from the beginning to use what they call “winter energy,” to act so as to conserve as much energy as possible. They do not seek leaders with vision, capable of making major breakthroughs. Instead, they elect prime ministers who serve as guardians, who voters believe provide the best chance of keeping the Canadian culture the way it is.

The French, on the other hand, rally behind leaders who challenge the system with new ideas (remember, the French Code for France is
IDEA
). Napoleon and de Gaulle are considered models of French leadership because they faced down the existing system and changed it to better serve the people (though, as we saw with Napoleon, the notion of “serving the people” changed with time).

ON-CODE
VOTING

Why do we vote as we do? In many ways, ideology and platform are not the basis of decision. The differences between conservatism and liberalism (to identify the American extremes) in this country are relatively small. While politicians and pundits paint dramatic pictures of an America starkly divided between red and blue states, you’ve seen throughout this book that there is strong consistency to how we think as a culture. Discovery sessions in Middle America net the same structure as those held in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Our “differences” are further diminished by America’s three-branch system of government. We debate major issues like abortion, gay rights, nuclear power, Social Security, and immigration control for a very long time before we make any movement at all. In fact, it is likely that the debate on any of these issues will extend beyond the term of whichever president we happen to be electing at the time. In addition, if we do move at all, the debate continues, allowing the opportunity for revision or further change. At the same time, many of our most powerful laws exist at the state level, so that Connecticut can authorize same-sex civil unions even as the debate rages at a national level. The beauty of the American Constitution is that our most powerful leaders don’t have too much power.

The basic components of the country really do not change very much during one presidential administration. What
does
change is the spirit of the country, the sense of optimism or the lack thereof. This largely relates to the president’s ability to fill the shoes of Moses, to make us believe that he can take us to the Promised Land. Neither 2004 presidential candidate was powerfully on Code. George W. Bush was certainly more reptilian than John Kerry, but his inability to inhabit the role of Moses has led to a sense of pessimism in the country and approval ratings that are near historic lows.

There is a sense in which the president is the “entertainer-in-chief.” His primary job is to inspire us, to keep our spirits up and to keep us moving in a productive fashion. Presidents who resonate deep down with the American archetype are excellent entertainers-in-chief. This is why actors (Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, and Jesse Ventura, to name a few) find popularity among the electorate. An on-Code president transcends ideology and moves the country forward in a way that an off-Code president cannot. Many disagreed with the platforms of
FDR
and Reagan, but both men effected tremendous turnarounds in America’s fortunes (particularly its economic fortunes) during their terms. Rebellious visionaries do that.

For the candidates themselves, the Code offers a vivid image of what Americans expect from their chief executives. The “vision thing” is critical, as is the ability to get one’s message across and inspire. Americans don’t want father figures who tell them what to do, but they do want men (and someday, maybe even soon, women) with a plan they can understand and follow. In addition, they decidedly do not want a president who thinks too much. Except under extraordinary circumstances, the more reptilian candidate always wins. This is something that John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, and many others didn’t understand.

Cultures change very slowly, which means Americans will be looking for “Moses” in their president a long time into the future. If we all understand this Code, the election process could be very different in 2008 and beyond.

The Code for America

O
ver the course of this book, we have explored some of the most fundamental archetypes in American culture and addressed the unconscious Codes at the heart of those archetypes. Some of these unconscious messages have been instructive (as in the Codes for beauty and shopping), some have been cautionary (as in the Codes for love and fat), and some have even been a little scary (as in the Code for sex). All give us a distinctive glimpse of why we do the things we do, and they provide us with a new set of glasses that allows us to view our behavior afresh. In addition, the contrast with Codes of other cultures has taught us that people around the world really are different.

The Code for America encompasses all the other Codes in this book. It addresses the way we think of ourselves from the widest perspective within our culture and touches on the other Codes at least indirectly. Understanding the Code for America helps explain why we think of love as false expectations, health as movement, luxury as military stripes, and the president as Moses.

So how do Americans see America?

Certainly, we see ourselves as “new.” As adolescents, we would, of course. There are no ancient parts of America except our forests and canyons. We’re always building and renewing, preferring to tear things down rather than preserve. Our place-names even reflect this. You can step into your car in New York and drive into New England, where you’ll pass New Haven, New London, and Newton on your way into New Hampshire. Alternatively, you could drive south and see New Hope, Newberry, and Newington on your way to New Orleans.

We also see ourselves as occupants of vast amounts of space. Were you to step into your car again and drive due west, you could drive for a week and still be in America. In Europe, you could drive through four different countries in half a day. This sense of size pervades our culture. Just as the Japanese are the masters of micro-culture because they must fit a huge number of people into a small space, Americans are the masters of macro-culture. We want everything in abundance, from our cars to our homes to our meals. Americans don’t want to hear that they need to downsize or scale back. Recently, an American car manufacturer planned a new version of one of their classic cars that was five inches smaller. This was a mistake. While five inches is a minimal difference, five inches
larger
would send a much more potent message. We have never taken the notion of cutting back well. How many of us listen to our doctors when they tell us to eat smaller portions? How many of us muse longingly about living in a smaller house?

Another fascinating thing about America, though, is that within these vast spaces one can find both tremendous diversity and unity. On that drive across the country, the landscape changes dramatically, from the rocky coast of Maine to the concrete magnificence of New York City to the wide plains of the Midwest to the awesome expanse of the Grand Canyon to the soaring redwoods of Northern California. Local flavor changes with equal dynamism. The seafood shack in New England becomes the barbecue joint in North Carolina, the steak-house in Omaha, the red-hot stand in Chicago, and the vegetarian café in San Francisco. Yet you could stay at a Holiday Inn every night of that drive, walking through the same lobby in Scranton that you’ll walk through in Sacramento, and you can grab a grande skim latte the next morning at the local Starbucks before you head off to your next destination. “
E pluribus unum
”—“From the many, one”—is a truly fitting motto for this culture.

This sense of newness, size, diversity, and unity forms a very strong imprint on Americans. Our symbols are eagles gliding in midair, a huge statue of a woman welcoming visitors to our shores, a flag being raised on top of the ruins of a devastated building. These symbols form for us a very strong image of who we are meant to be. When I held discovery sessions to learn the Code for America, I received third-hour stories filled with powerful and poignant imagery.