The recently concluded Democratic National Convention in Chicago had everything: glitzy musical acts, rousing speeches, Oprah Winfrey, and effusive displays of familial love. Such sentimental gushing is an important part of the performance that US presidential candidates must put on to win over voters.
NEW YORK – The Democratic Party just put on a terrific show at their convention in Chicago. It had everything: glitzy musical acts, rousing speeches, religious devotion, floods of tears, promises of hope, moments of joy, uplifting patriotism, Oprah Winfrey, and lots and lots of balloons. Television commentators marveled at the way Vice President Kamala Harris “presented” herself: her smile, her body language, her voice, even her choice of clothing.
Politics, whether in dictatorships or democracies, always involves showmanship of one kind or another. But in the United States, politics has long been indistinguishable from entertainment. The caustic American journalist H.L. Mencken, who despised politicians and thought most Americans were ignorant oafs, was a great observer of political party conventions. He wrote in 1927: “The United States, to my eye, is incomparably the greatest show on earth.”
But why, oh why, do candidates have to make such a show of loving their families? What does all that hugging and kissing on stage have to do with politics? Is the performance of devotion truly necessary to win over voters? In America, it appears so.
In most democracies, people vote for political parties and the interests they represent. Charisma plays a role – even in countries like Japan, where most politicians are singularly lacking in that quality. But overall, Asian and European politicians are not nearly as eager or as willing as Americans to sell themselves to the public as warm and loving human beings. That is what people have traditionally wanted from kings and queens, not elected politicians.
Ever since King George III (“Farmer George”) in the eighteenth century, British monarchs liked to be seen as fine, upstanding family people. Queen Elizabeth II allowed the BBC to document her domestic life, from barbecues in the garden to tea with the children. She felt that she had to come down to earth to remain popular.
Americans liberated themselves from the British monarchy in 1776 (Farmer George was their last king). In the intervening years, the White House has acquired much of the pomp and circumstance of a royal court, to an extent that far exceeds that of other democracies – except perhaps France, where the republic is still dressed up in royal grandeur.
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To ascend to the US presidency, with all its quasi-monarchical trappings, a candidate – like the British royals – must make a great show of being a regular guy or gal, a person like you and me, someone to have a beer with on the front porch. People who aspire to be president are not really like us, of course, but they must pretend to be.
But the sentimental gush of US party conventions – the hugging, the kissing, and the effusions of familial love – is conspicuous in other American ceremonial occasions, too. Foreign recipients of an Oscar, for example, tend to keep acceptance speeches crisp and short. Not the American stars, who must tearfully thank everyone from their primary schoolteachers to their pet dogs, and express their deep devotion to humanity.
Sentimentality is misplaced emotion, a public performance of love, grief, hope, and joy, rather than the real thing, which is normally kept private. Politics, like the Hollywood film industry, is in fact a ruthlessly competitive business, where private feelings – one’s own as well as those of others – often must be ignored or suppressed to get ahead.
The demands of ambition are often scorching, and can easily burn loving spouses and children. But feelings must go somewhere, be expressed somehow. Hence, the gushing on the public stage, in Hollywood and at party conventions.
There was a lot of talk at the Democratic National Convention of Americans “looking out for each other,” “loving their neighbors,” and “helping the poor and marginalized.” Many Americans might fit that description. But the US is a far more ruthlessly competitive society – and has a more threadbare safety net – than most other democracies. To succeed requires salesmanship. This is especially true of the men and women who must sell themselves to the public, as movie actors or politicians do. They are performers.
To put on an act is, by definition, to create something that is not real. And yet the public demands from actors and politicians that they come across as genuine. This is why we crave gossip about their private lives, the more scurrilous the better. And, more charitably, it is also why we want to be shown how much a politician adores her husband or his wife. We wish them to be, in a word, “authentic.”
What we see, then, at the party convention and the Oscar ceremony, in the television interview and the magazine profile, is the performance of authenticity. In the right hands, as was the case in Chicago, this can indeed look like the greatest show on earth.
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With less than two months to go until the US presidential election, the candidates’ opposing worldviews, objectives, and priorities – and their implications for international relations, the economy, and democracy – have come into sharper focus. While it is impossible to know exactly what a leader will do once in office, the contours of both a Donald Trump and a Kamala Harris presidency are remarkably well defined.
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NEW YORK – The Democratic Party just put on a terrific show at their convention in Chicago. It had everything: glitzy musical acts, rousing speeches, religious devotion, floods of tears, promises of hope, moments of joy, uplifting patriotism, Oprah Winfrey, and lots and lots of balloons. Television commentators marveled at the way Vice President Kamala Harris “presented” herself: her smile, her body language, her voice, even her choice of clothing.
Politics, whether in dictatorships or democracies, always involves showmanship of one kind or another. But in the United States, politics has long been indistinguishable from entertainment. The caustic American journalist H.L. Mencken, who despised politicians and thought most Americans were ignorant oafs, was a great observer of political party conventions. He wrote in 1927: “The United States, to my eye, is incomparably the greatest show on earth.”
But why, oh why, do candidates have to make such a show of loving their families? What does all that hugging and kissing on stage have to do with politics? Is the performance of devotion truly necessary to win over voters? In America, it appears so.
In most democracies, people vote for political parties and the interests they represent. Charisma plays a role – even in countries like Japan, where most politicians are singularly lacking in that quality. But overall, Asian and European politicians are not nearly as eager or as willing as Americans to sell themselves to the public as warm and loving human beings. That is what people have traditionally wanted from kings and queens, not elected politicians.
Ever since King George III (“Farmer George”) in the eighteenth century, British monarchs liked to be seen as fine, upstanding family people. Queen Elizabeth II allowed the BBC to document her domestic life, from barbecues in the garden to tea with the children. She felt that she had to come down to earth to remain popular.
Americans liberated themselves from the British monarchy in 1776 (Farmer George was their last king). In the intervening years, the White House has acquired much of the pomp and circumstance of a royal court, to an extent that far exceeds that of other democracies – except perhaps France, where the republic is still dressed up in royal grandeur.
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Project Syndicate is returning to Climate Week NYC with an even more expansive program. Join us live on September 22 as we welcome speakers from around the world at our studio in Manhattan to address critical dimensions of the climate debate.
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To ascend to the US presidency, with all its quasi-monarchical trappings, a candidate – like the British royals – must make a great show of being a regular guy or gal, a person like you and me, someone to have a beer with on the front porch. People who aspire to be president are not really like us, of course, but they must pretend to be.
But the sentimental gush of US party conventions – the hugging, the kissing, and the effusions of familial love – is conspicuous in other American ceremonial occasions, too. Foreign recipients of an Oscar, for example, tend to keep acceptance speeches crisp and short. Not the American stars, who must tearfully thank everyone from their primary schoolteachers to their pet dogs, and express their deep devotion to humanity.
Sentimentality is misplaced emotion, a public performance of love, grief, hope, and joy, rather than the real thing, which is normally kept private. Politics, like the Hollywood film industry, is in fact a ruthlessly competitive business, where private feelings – one’s own as well as those of others – often must be ignored or suppressed to get ahead.
The demands of ambition are often scorching, and can easily burn loving spouses and children. But feelings must go somewhere, be expressed somehow. Hence, the gushing on the public stage, in Hollywood and at party conventions.
There was a lot of talk at the Democratic National Convention of Americans “looking out for each other,” “loving their neighbors,” and “helping the poor and marginalized.” Many Americans might fit that description. But the US is a far more ruthlessly competitive society – and has a more threadbare safety net – than most other democracies. To succeed requires salesmanship. This is especially true of the men and women who must sell themselves to the public, as movie actors or politicians do. They are performers.
To put on an act is, by definition, to create something that is not real. And yet the public demands from actors and politicians that they come across as genuine. This is why we crave gossip about their private lives, the more scurrilous the better. And, more charitably, it is also why we want to be shown how much a politician adores her husband or his wife. We wish them to be, in a word, “authentic.”
What we see, then, at the party convention and the Oscar ceremony, in the television interview and the magazine profile, is the performance of authenticity. In the right hands, as was the case in Chicago, this can indeed look like the greatest show on earth.