If as some historians suggest Americans renew their passion for politics every 30 years perhaps this reawakening is due less to changes of heart than to changes in how the elected communicate with the electorate. During the 30's radio brought FDR's fireside chats into the homes of a nation frightened and worried by the Depression. in the 1960's the Nixon-Kennedy debates ushered in the television age of politics. Thirty years later during the 1992 election the means by which politicians defined themselves changed yet again.
During the presidential campaign, candidates supplemented their frenetic tours from city to city with satellite feeds that hooked them into the 10 to 15 local markets at a time. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore climbed aboard a bus and rode through towns like Corsicana,Texas and Parrott, Georgia places that hadn't seen a presidential candidate since WWII I watched along with millions of others from across the country as the spectacle was beamed back to us in a microsecond.
Empowered by technology and emboldened by a desire to take their case directly to the people politicians broke all the old rules. Clinton played his sax on Arsenio Hall, George Bush appeared on MTV and Ross Perot shocked us all by announcing his candidacy on Larry King Live.
Over dinner one evening during the early months of the Clinton administration my partner Michael Berman and I noted that friends who had never turned an eye toward things political were suddenly taking notice of the new faces coming to power in Washington. Whether it was because of who they were or how they were covered these new personalities were proving fascinating to a freshly engaged public. Since that time the trend has only accelerated. Political figures are increasingly written about as the personalities and pop icons they have become. Politics has migrated into the realm of popular culture and folks can't turn away.
That's not to say that prospects for a successful political magazine were encouraging when Michael and I started developing the idea for George two years ago. Despite what we perceived as a surge of interest in personalities of politics, the publics cynicism toward government itself was as pervasive as ever. A magazine devoted entirely to covering a system widely regarded as broken was a tough sell.
But voters nevertheless seemed energized by their anger and eager to experiment with alternatives, and perhaps because we were publishing neophytes we stuck with the idea even after the instructor in our two day seminar called "Starting Your Own Magazine" told us "You can successfully launch a magazine in just about anything except for religion and politics." Fortunately one company that knows a thing or two about publishing disagreed. After 14 months of dubiously successful fundraising, we brought our idea to the people at Hachette Filpacchi and from the start they recognized it's viability. Today they are our partners in this venture.
All along the way the question we never stopped being asked was, why create a magazine about politics? We believe that if we can make politics accessible by covering it in an entertaining and compelling way popular interest and involvement in the process will follow. But calling George a political magazine isn't entirely accurate, since we aim to be bred apart from traditional political magazines. Our coverage of politics won't be colored by any partisan perspective - not even mine. George is a lifestyle magazine with politics at it's core, illuminating the points where politics converges with business, media, entertainment, fashion, art, and science. Whether its violence in the movies or free speech on the internet culture drives politics. The public arena is not a hot house sealed off from the general climate. It partakes of it, changes it and is changed by it.
Recognizing that interest in "inside Washington" is thin beyong the Beltway, we will define politics extravagantly, from elected officials to media moguls to move stars to ordinary citizens. And we will cover it exuberantly, showing the unexpected, meaningful and whimsical ways that it affects your daily life.
The fact that George is post-partisan doesn't mean that we don't have opinions. It just means we don't believe that party affiliation is the only hook on which to hang ones political identity. With a recent poll showing that nearly forty percent of all Americans no longer have any loyalty to an organized party, we suspect that Americans want to know more about the people who seek to govern and less about the correctness of their politics. When "progressives" find themselves defending the status quo and "conservatives" are advocating wholesale change, labels serve less to define than to obscure. In George, you will hear all the voices in today's political dialogue, because as we learned from last November's midterm elections, today's opposition can become tomorrow's ruling party.
We approach politics as you might- as skeptical consumers, for whom efficacy is at least as important as party loyalty. And if we can do just one thing at George, we hope it's to demystify the political process, to enable you to see politicians not just as ideological symbols, but as lively and engaging men and women who shape public life. As a lifelong spectator of the giant puppet show that can turn public people into barely recognizable symbols of themselves, I hope we can provide something more useful.
For those with more exotic tastes, George will be the first feature magazine to be launched simultaneously on the news stands and on the World Wide Web. Our website (http://www.georgemag.com) will offer readers the opportunity to converse with one another and to discuss the magazine and politics in general, as well as serve as a resource guide for particular issues. As we develop our site, we hope to bring you more elaborate means of engaging in politics, including timely riffs from the campaign trail as the presidential race heats up.
So that's George. We hope enjoy reading it as much as we've enjoyed creating it. It's the first of it's kind, like founding father George Washington, its namesake. We've set out to make a magazine about politics in which the images are as compelling as the prose and where you might find something to feed your enthusiasm, spark your curiosity, or even ease your disaffection.
If we're doing it right or slipping off the mark, please let us know; your input is critical. Our second issue will contain your feedback in our first "Yeas and Nays" letters to the editor section, which you can reach by snail mail (George,1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019) or by e-mail (yeas@georgemag.com). We hope you'll be informed, provoked, and entertained-but mainly, we hope you'll get involved, because as a wise man once said, politics is too important to be left to the politicians.
John Kennedy
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