The Body Politic and Its Ersatz Double
(cross-posted from Substack)
I am old enough to have watched the first televised presidential debate in 1960 (Kennedy vs. Nixon). Yesterday I sat through the latest offspring of that seminal event: a Socialist primary debate in France. Although press commentary this morning was generally favorable (“often interesting,” “a cordial ambiance”), I found it impossible to keep my mind from wandering as I endured 3 1/2 hours (!) of what seemed to me banal sloganeering occasionally enlivened by a flash of wit or a pointed rejoinder. So it was impossible not to wonder why this particular genre of politicking has endured for going on seven decades.
To be sure, a primary debate with five candidates (as in France yesterday) lacks the dramatic potential of a direct confrontation between the two finalists for supreme office. In a five-way debate, time, bludgeoned by repetition, is dilated to the point where it is too thin to sustain attention; even Homer must nod after being told, in five different voices with varying degrees of eloquence, that prices are too high, that inflation is out of control. that the cost of living has risen, that the “ordinary person” finds it difficult to make ends meet, and that affordability is the top priority. Some commentators applauded this harmonious convergence as an expression of “consensus on issues of social justice, unsurprising in that all five candidates represented the ‘social-democratic portion’ of the political spectrum.” If so, it is equally unsurprising that this portion of the spectrum is generating little excitement.
Aware, perhaps, that televiewers needed a jolt if they were to remain awake throughout the exercise, one candidate, prodded by a question from a young student in the audience, decided to let slip the dogs of war. While she, no less than her principal opponent, favored standing firm against Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, he, she alleged, “would take the fight all the way to Moscow.” By contrast, she, chastely preferring negotiation to aggression and peace to war, would “negotiate.” This sally offered an opening to the aggrieved favorite to draw his rapier wit from its scabbard: “You confuse me with Napoleon.” A hit, a palpable hit. The audience’s collective blood pressure rose. Was a real fight about to break out? As it turned out, no: comity was quickly restored when the least-known of the debaters interjected that Putin has shown no interest in negotiating. So much for the aggressor (not Putin but the lone female candidate, exposed as “shrill,” “soft,” and “naive”).
Subsequently, the sphygmomanometer settled back to a more placid level, where it remained until the issue of Gaza was raised. Again the audience’s blood pressure rose as a line was drawn in the sand: on one side stood those willing to use the word “genocide,” on the other, those who refused. “You used ‘genocide’ to describe Chinese persecution of the Uighurs, why won’t you apply it to what you concede are Israel’s war crimes in Gaza?” But, protested the target of this attack, “the International Criminal Court is considering Israel’s ‘crimes’ but refrains from calling them ‘genocide.’ I follow the court.” Here was a “clash,” as the French like to call such confrontations. A clear difference between the candidates, easy to encapsulate for pithy summary in news reports and video clips! And yet we are no more enlightened as to what either would do about the tragedy in Gaza or the daily worsening crisis in the West Bank. Good for television, bad for democracy.
So has the televised debate format reached the end of its useful life? The organizers of yesterday’s French debate indicated doubt as to its viability by mixing the traditional debate format with the more recent “town hall” model, in which selected audience members (rather than professional journalists) are permitted to put questions to the candidates. Unfortunately, this merely results in staging what Pierre Rosanvallon has called “the politics of proximity” for non-proximate consumption. For example, a single mother (mère célibataire in the more musical French version) was called upon to recount at some considerable length the difficulty she has in finding work and paying her bills. She spelled out her poverty in precise numerical detail, in stark contrast to the candidates’ careful avoidance of figures when promising to raise the minimum wage or cut gas taxes. One naturally sympathized with her plight—all the candidates were quick to demonstrate their solidarity by remembering to address her by her first name, Joanna—and yet one had to wonder whether discussion of such intimate matters really belonged under the klieg lights of a TV studio or revealed much about how each candidate might respond to the very serious problems of a state that already devotes more of its GDP to social transfers than any other and thus faces growing budget deficits, rising interest payments, and falling credit ratings while saddled with an aging population, a chronic inability to enact pension reform, increased energy costs, and competitive limits on its ability to raise taxes.
The personification of the debate inherent in centering it on the heart-rending difficulties of a woman of color (and likely selected precisely for that color by the producers of this spectacle) precluded any discussion of the compromises and tradeoffs necessary to the management of a complex welfare state, though it did allow the candidates to perform, with varying degrees of verisimilitude, the gestures of empathy and commiseration that the politics of proximity is designed to foreground. Viewers respond to these performances as if watching a film or TV show rather than a “debate” in the traditional sense of a rhetorical contest or a weighing of arguments. They form, if only subconsciously, judgments as to the convincingness of the act, the skill or sincerity of the actor, or, by contrast, the clumsiness or self-regard of the performer’s presentation. These visceral judgments are then harvested by pollsters and eventuate in a verdict as to who “won” the debate. Did the putative frontrunner underperform? Will the little-known dark horse emerge as a genuine contender? Might the aggressive but aging old campaigner have overplayed her hand so badly as to disqualify herself from future contention, or was she perhaps playing a tactical role in tandem with the party leader who needs to find a way to trip up the frontrunner without committing a personal foul for which he might be penalized?
The televised political debate thus takes its place as part of the complex spectacle—part gladiatorial entertainment, part influence operation, part blood sport—into which our advanced democracies have devolved. They summon us to participate in an ersatz communion, as if we were actually part of a body politic, because we gather in one—virtual—place and simultaneously listen to voices that seem to be human even if they have been trained by arduous “debate prep sessions” to answer only in ways that have been pre-tested on focus groups and hopefully shorn of any formulations that might suggest doubt, hesitation, or genuine appreciation of the need for caution in the face of real uncertainty.
There ought to be a better way of choosing candidates, but I have no idea what it might be.