Performance-based Politics: A New Threat?

On 26 June, The Guardian newspaper published an opinion article by Rafael Behr. Taking Conservative M.P. Boris Johnson’s political doctrine of “cakeism” (“having baked goods and eating them”) as a point of departure, Behr proposes that we are currently witnessing a profound shift in the conduct and nature of contemporary politics.  Gone are the rational, reserved politicians that we have come to know and respect. And in their place stands a bizarre group of “charismatics, cartoon characters and comedians” that crave nothing more than the camera lens and measure their success purely in terms of applause. “The constitutional nerds,” Behr notes with a melodramatic flourish, “are drowning in the demagogic tide.”

“So, what?” I hear you ask. Well, for Behr at least, this new form of “politics based on performance” poses a direct threat to the democratic system. With politicians increasingly desperate to stay in the limelight, he warns, their performances are becoming more radical, unpredictable and dangerous. One only has to consider the tone of President Trump’s latest Twitter-based spat with Iran to see that Behr might have a point here. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the current “cult of political personality” is also viewed by Behr to be forcing out established notions due process and circumventing the rule of law. Drunk on power and popularity, the twenty-first century politician is thought to have become a stranger to constitutional procedure – they must now get what they want, no matter the cost. “This is what we see,” explains Behr, “[…] a despotic urge to rule by proclamation.”

Now I’m not usually one for writing responses to opinion pieces (to be brutally honest, I tend to avoid the opinion section of newspapers altogether), but there are several points in the argument outlined above that I think deserve further discussion and critique. First and foremost, there is Behr’s suggestion that a politics modelled on entertainment is somehow unprecedented or new. Although he concedes that “[t]here is no democracy without some showiness,” the overriding suggestion of the piece is that we have never witnessed this style of politics before. Prior to the likes of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, Behr proposes, politicians were calm, composed individuals who never dreamed of resorting to superficial performances in their attempt to govern. This is, however, simply not the case. Take the former U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, as an example. An actor in his younger years, Reagan is widely regarded to have run his administration like a Hollywood film studio. His advance teams, for instance, would perform “walk-throughs” or “rehearsals” of upcoming events. Such was the emphasis that Reagan placed on political theatricality that his somewhat divisive chief of staff, Donald Regan, would later describe him “as a sort of supreme anchorman whose public persona was the most important element of his presidency.” A politics informed by performance, then, has been in operation a lot longer than Behr seems willing to acknowledge.

The second element of Behr’s argument that I sadly take issue with is his framing of the public. Underpinning his claim that a “[p]olitics based purely on performance is unsustainable in a democracy” is the implicit assumption that this ‘new’ mode of governance renders the electorate mute. Transfixed by the next headline-grabbing political appearance, the public is thought to sit at home quite happily (or at least helplessly) as “Boris-style bullshitters” tear parliamentary procedure to pieces. But is this really the case? Stumble into any pub or café, and you will not find a group of mindless automatons that accept the words of Nigel Farage without argument; instead, you will likely discover an active, dynamic and engaged public that is only too eager to debate the events of the day. The protests marking Donald Trump’s recent visit to the United Kingdom serve as a clear illustration of this critical agency. Far from succumbing to the Trump “celebrity brand,” thousands of British citizens chose to contest the U.S. president’s performative regime by producing their own counter-spectacle: one which would be headed by a twenty-foot high blimp depicting President Trump as a nappy-wearing baby.

With all this in mind, what are we to make of Behr’s article? I do believe that it is a very timely piece that sheds important light on an often-overlooked feature of contemporary governance; namely, those political performances that tend to take place outside the formal institutions of the state. As I have discovered through my own research on U.S. presidential visits, these events act as crucial points of knowledge production, and hence occupy a central position within any individual’s political armoury. However, as I hope this post has shown, we should also avoid uncritically overstating the power of a performance-based politics. These theatrical productions do not take place in a vacuum, but are received, reworked and resisted by a distinctly un-passive public. And this, I think, is the source of hope that readers of Behr’s article should cling on to.