Josh King

Josh King’s original 250-image multi-media survey of American political theater first given on college campuses in 2009, from George Washington crossing the Delaware in Emanuel Leutze’s iconic painting, to Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady’s wet glass collodions of Abraham Lincoln, to photographs of Barack Obama at the Beer Summit in 2009 – and beyond. This talk focuses on how the presidency has been presented during throughout the history of the American Republic through an ever more complex process of theatrical stagecraft, image manufacture, and media distribution.

We watch news broadcasts, read newspapers and surf through blogs and social media content every hour of every day, our brains conditioned to react in certain ways to what we see and hear. But how much do we really understand about how that imagery and those soundbites are manufactured and distributed for public consumption? In this talk, Josh King reviews the prior month of political spectacle and deconstructs it into its component parts so that citizens can bring a more trained eye to the visual catnip they’re fed through various mediums.

Mike Dukakis and the tank. George H.W. Bush and the supermarket scanner. Bob Dole’s fall from stage. Al Gore’s canoe ride down the Connecticut River. George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished. Howard Dean’s scream. John Kerry’s windsurfing. John McCain’s maverick marketing. Mitt Romney’s singing. Barack Obama’s “Vanilla Presidency.” All of these scenes unfolded in what Josh King calls the “Age of Optics” from 1988 to the present, but the reasons that they were truly catastrophic is little understood. In this talk, King helps audiences understand the core ingredients and key players of the political gaffe and how to see campaign stagecraft from many angles and under a whole new light.

Armed with a menagerie of images and videos that make people stop, think and reflect, the man who helped shape the unique brand of Bill Clinton's political stagecraft brings audiences on a multi-media guided tour through the Age of Optics, ultimately leading to the election of Donald Trump. The stops on King's tour will be immediately familiar to many: Dukakis and the tank, Bush and the supermarket scanner, the Dean Scream, "Mission Accomplished" on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. But the real stories King shares behind those moments and images, and how the media fed them to the public, help to explain why, when Donald Trump descended his escalator to launch his campaign, the clock began to tick on his ascendancy to the White House. King's talk pulls back the curtain on Campaign 2016 and lays out a road map for candidates in 2020 and beyond who aspire to the highest office in the land.