Three thoughts about ... performative politics
Joe Biden and Donald Trump, dancing for the masses.
Photo by Terje Solli
I had a small realization as I looked at my last two Substack headlines.
There's this:
Donald Trump may skip the GOP primary debates. I'm fine with that.
And this:
Joe Biden doesn't do press conferences. I'm OK with that.
Aside from the risk of slipping into self-parody with my headline writing style, there's a mini-trend going on here that I suspect I should address. Three thoughts about performative politics:
One
It's easy to look at these headlines, and maybe even the pieces themselves, and conclude I'm just ready to give a free pass to people in power -- no accountability, no questions or opponents, and just skating free with few obstacles. Indeed, looking at the two headlines bunched together in my Substack feed, I even wondered about my own motivations for a moment.
But here's the thing: I don't think press conferences or debates really do the things they're supposed to do. At this stage of the game they seem designed -- at best -- to produce what used to be called a Kinsley Gaffe. "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say," Michael Kinsley once said. That's at their best. And it's true: "Stand back and stand by" told us more about Donald Trump's intentions in 2020 than just about any other single moment.
That's at their best. At their worst they simply produce regular gaffes -- misstatements, thoughtless comments, etc. -- to be cycled through the churn. How often do we learn something new? Rarely, I'd say.
Two
I'm also just exhausted by the performative nature of politics, which seems to be a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing. We expect to be entertained by our politics, and the people who succeed best at that -- the Donald Trumps and Tucker Carlsons of the world -- seem to make the biggest dent. Is this good for us? I couldn't possibly argue that it is.
What are debates and press conferences but performances? Admittedly, this may be my own problem. I'd rather read a transcript than watch potentially cringe-making moments live -- Trump's daily pressers during the pandemic were emotionally agonizing for me -- but most people, most voters, base their votes more on vibes than on data inputs and outputs. Probably I need to get more comfortable with that side of the process, but I still think the performance aspect of politicking carries too much weight.
Three
All that said, I'm not sure of better ways to create that information and accountability than the systems we currently have. Maybe this is the best of all possible democratic worlds.
But I still don't want to see Donald Trump spray his obnoxiousness all over a debate stage. And -- because he's the leader of the most powerful country on earth -- I'd prefer not to give Joe Biden too many opportunities to create international incidents by misspeaking at a press conference.
As always, it's possible I'm wrong about this stuff.
Housekeeping
This Substack is, as ever, a work in progress. I'm trying a new format, "Three Thoughts" to try to bring a little focus to these parts. Let me know how it works.
What I'm watching
Saw THE POST and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN back-to-back this week. Both stories are about the Nixon-era Washington Post, of course -- the first about the Pentagon Papers, the second about Watergate.
The Spielberg movie's camerawork is almost frenetic, and shot with a filter that makes many of the actors look like they're fighting in the uncanny valley. ATPM, on the other hand, is quiet and patient, featuring long conversations focused on the grind of eking out even the smallest bits of information. For me, ATPM feels more solid and memorable just because it is so rooted in the nitty gritty while still having a heroic storyline.
Weirdly, though, ATPM takes us right up to about 18 months before Nixon's resignation -- and then in the span of about a minute, the last minute, shows us teletype headlines that quickly tell the rest of the story. Just when you're getting to where you think the scandal is about to snowball, that's when the movie ends. It's odd. And yet it works.
Yeah, I remember when movies rewarded our patience.
Performative politics is absolutely a serious problem. That said, I'm pretty sure it's symptomatic of a larger issue, not an isolated phenomenon. Over the course of the 20th century, from the advent of radio to the spread of ubiquitous internet access, we've experienced a transition in our information environment that hasn't yet been reflected in our institutions. This is perfectly understandable; we've only just started building institutions that might be able to handle the change.
Regardless, though, the change is this: we have shifted from an environment of information scarcity to one of information saturation. Because information producers and consumers still largely operate on scarcity-based environmental models, you get a situation where every information channel is constantly blasting every scrap of information it can in every direction. This results in saturated audiences who can't process the entire feed, which then encourages the information pipelines to favor generically attention-grabbing items, and in turn information producers are encouraged to churn out attention-grabbing items. In politics, an arena particularly susceptible to information problems, the result is meaningless daily press briefings and terminally online congressional representatives.