Performative Punditry Prejudices the Polity

Janan Ganesh, in a recent Financial Times op-ed (paywall), bemoans the fact that politics does not rise to a substantive level of civic engagement. Instead, tribalism - the desire and need to belong to a group - drives our political action. 

Ganesh invites readers to imagine the pandemic counterfactual: what if progressives were pushing for the opening of schools and populist conservatives championed mask-wearing and a strict lockdown? He points to the philosophical differences between the left (reality is constructed) and the right (reality-based community) over the recent decades to argue that this might not be that hard of a counterfactual to envision. If only the political circumstances of the pandemic’s rise were different. 

The broader point that the article builds up to is this: politics is tribal and the point of being engaged is to be on a team and not necessarily the policies that the team stands for. Small signs of change in administration within D.C. that form the glossy veneer over this change in “teams” (if you don’t carry an NPR or New Yorker tote bag, can you actually call yourself a liberal?) 

Decrying political tribalism is nothing new. Certainly, since the Gingrich revolution in 1994 and the maturation of cable news era tribalism has been readily apparent in modern political life. But paired with the explosion of social media and the spread of misinformation, opposing sides are digging in as if it was the Battle of the Somme. 

But instead of offering a solution, Ganesh throws up his hands at the team-based divisions within the polity. Performative political punditry at its finest. 

Another recent notable “think piece” was Ezra Klein’s indictment of performative progressivism In California, best summed up in the first line of the last paragraph: “There is a danger — not just in California, but everywhere — that politics becomes an aesthetic rather than a program.” As a citizen of northern California, I don’t know whether to clap in agreement with Klein’s argument or pull my hair out at how vapid a conclusion he ends on.  

Neither of these articles goes very far past admonishing society writ large. To go a few cuts deeper, one should look to Eitan Hersh’s assessment of political hobbyism that college-educated Americans believe qualifies as political engagement. Yet, Hersh argues, the consumption of political information or casual political curiosity is akin to going to a sports game. I will cheer for my team, but I’m not going to put in the work to run bleachers at 5 AM or clean out the stands after the game. 

Tribal hobbyism divorces the realities of politics from “caring” about politics. Community engagement and actually doing the work matter. Scrolling Twitter and lobbing money at the rising politician on the national stage doesn’t matter. 

Hersh’s article trumpets a call to action. Or at least it points to an off-ramp for hobbyists to step away from performative politics towards grappling with politics as power-based. 

Yet, what all three articles miss, or really where all three articles should go next, is how does the political process in our country encourage and reward this behavior? 

It is one thing to say that people should be engaged in politics in a more meaningful way. Yuppies shouldn’t pay lip service to Black Lives Matter while opposing affordable housing projects in their neighborhoods. College-educated elites shouldn’t treat politics like a sports game. 

But the structure of political engagement encourages this behavior. Campaigns are never-ending. An endless spigot of money, media soundbites, and general bloviation (including this post) pervade American political life. 

It’s easy to admonish many Americans for tribal, performative, and comfortable politics. It is harder to outline the needs of citizenship. And harder still to point to fixes in the political process to encourage less performative politics and more power politics. Yes, more power politics. We must acknowledge that not only is it the responsibility of individuals to change our democracy but also that of our democracy to invite better citizenship. 

This argument is circular, of course. How can democracy change without individuals demanding that change? It cannot. But instead of distracting citizens by admonishing them for performative politics, the pundits need to cease their own performative placation and turn towards the structures in the process that encourage the behavior. Unfortunately, those structures invite pundits to perform as well. And so it goes.