The 2016 US General Election is The Most Frightening Reality TV Show Ever Made
Sunday’s presidential debate was perhaps the most outrageous event of the general election so far. Shortly before it aired, Donald Trump held a press conference with three women who’ve accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment— Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey— and one, Kathy Shelton, who was attacked as a child by a man whose court-appointed defense attorney was Hillary Clinton.
The purpose of the stunt was to cast Clinton as a defender of sex criminals, throw her off her game and confirm what most commentators had already predicted, namely that Trump would make the sexual misconduct of Bill the focus of his attacks on Hillary. Reports on Monday suggested that Trump intended for these women to sit in the raised box alongside his family during the debate itself, a plan only thwarted at the last minute by the organizers of the event.
Just days earlier, a recording from 2005 had surfaced in which Trump could be heard talking on a hot mic about “grabbing women by the pussy.” That he should suddenly become the supposed defender of victims of sexual assault is grotesque and obscene. So much is obvious. What this grim episode more tellingly reveals, however, is that Donald Trump and his campaign managers are playing this election like a reality TV show.
The phrase “reality television” has always been inapt. The genre is entirely contrived and simply trades on the appearance of being “real” while in fact being the complete opposite. The scripted lines, set pieces and showdowns which are the hallmark of the genre are artfully orchestrated to shock, upset, amuse and entertain. They do so by placing the show’s participants in highly combustible situations, which the producers ignite by throwing in a match while letting the cameras roll to record the mayhem.
That’s exactly what happened on Sunday night. Whatever else one might think about the Trump campaign, judged strictly by the standards of reality television, having those women sit in the audience staring right at Bill and Hillary was a stroke of genius.
The neat thing about approaching your political campaign as if it were a reality television show, with plotlines provided by Breitbart News, is that the ordinary rules of political conduct no longer apply. They are replaced instead by standards drawn from the entertainment industry.
Trump doesn’t have to display a sound grasp of policy, because demonstrating an awareness of how to effect political change is secondary to his main goal of producing something that entertains in the moment. He doesn’t have to tell the truth, because the truth is in fact whatever narrative he and his production team has decided to contrive. He can substitute character assassination for reasoned political argument because his job is to provide a vicarious thrill for those watching who would assail his opponent in the same way, if only they had the chance.
This was not a political debate — and certainly not a town-hall, an opportunity for citizens to hold the candidates to account, as it was supposed to be — but an unremittingly depressing, sordid and stage-managed spectacle. Not that politics isn’t often depressing, sordid and stage-managed. It is, and it is by its nature. As George Orwell rightly observed, “politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” We kid ourselves to pretend otherwise. But there was something especially saddening about this episode. If there is such a thing as political grief — that is to say, the experience of the emotion of grief relating not to the death of a loved one, but to politics — then I felt it last night.
It’s not just that Trump debases politics by turning it into crude form of entertainment. In some sense that is unavoidable. Politics has to be entertaining, because it competes with so many other activities for voters’ attention. Far more troubling is the ease with which he deceives. His lies are so extreme, so totalizing, so unnecessarily gratuitous, that, to borrow from Hannah Arendt, they pull the very fabric of politics out from beneath our feet.
That professional politicians lie is an obvious truism. It is less obvious how we, as citizens, should feel about it. It is very easy for the armchair political pundit to claim, for example, that politicians should always tell the truth. Trump was getting at this idea when he referred to Clinton as “caught in a total lie” by the leaked excerpts of paid speeches she had given to Wall Street bankers. In one speech, Clinton talks frankly about the need to adopt both a private position and a public position on certain matters of policy. Trump’s implied critique is that this reveals Clinton to be fundamentally duplicitous.
Clinton tried to rebuff this critique through a strained and tortured allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to pass the 13th Amendment. Though it didn’t entirely convince, she was trying to convey the (entirely correct) point that a politician interested in advancing the common good sometimes has to make contradictory arguments in front of different audiences.
Clinton was, in other words, seeking to defend herself as a Weberian politician who is willing to get her hands dirty because she’s trying to do good. It’s no surprise that this defense fell flat, even though it’s true. It is not easy for a politician to tell the electorate that sometimes she has to lie in order to get things done.
Why are we so resistant to this thought? It is very easy to adopt an extremely moralistic attitude toward lying in politics, but we do so at the risk of becoming hypocrites. Most of us already believe that lying in some circumstances is justified. Few people think, for example, that you are required to tell the truth to the Nazi officer at the door who asks if there are Jews inside. If we recognize exceptions to the general rule that we should be truthful in our private lives, why should it be any different in politics?
Reasons of national security, for example, have long been accepted as appropriate grounds for politicians to conceal their activities. As the philosopher Bernard Williams says in Truth and Truthfulness: “Any government is charged with the security of its citizens, a responsibility that cannot be discharged without force and secrecy. It will be lucky if it can discharge it without deceiving someone, and if that does not already include the citizens, it is very likely that it will come to do so.” Williams is not giving carte blanche to the political liar. As he points out, there are good reasons for defending the value of truthfulness in politics.
For example, it is difficult for citizens in a democracy to hold their leaders to account if they are not told the truth about their actions. Still, his reminder that lying is an occupational hazard borne by those who enter politics is timely. Perhaps instead of asking “did this politician lie?” we should ask instead “what kinds of lie did she tell, and what was she trying to do?”
For instance, it is plausible for Clinton to argue that in advocating for one position on free trade and open borders to bankers, while defending another to the public, she was pursuing an entirely reasonable goal: reconciling the conflicting interests upon which she was expected to act. On the one hand, her position required that she respond to the economic anxiety felt by the public following the financial crash of 2008. On the other, she needed to work to form strategic alliances with bankers, given that they continue to wield considerable power and influence over the economy.
As a centrist politician, Clinton probably believes that the common good for America includes the existence of a well-regulated banking sector that generates a healthy amount of profit. If so, some balancing of these public and private interests is called for. One reasonable interpretation of her speech is that this is precisely what she was trying to do. Of course, one can never rule out the naked pursuit of self-interest as a motive in politics. Clinton’s critics are free to advance this interpretation of her actions if they wish. I don’t, however, find them particularly compelling.
Trump’s lies, on the other hand, could not plausibly be construed as an attempt to reconcile the conflicting forces of politics, with a view to getting things done for the purposes of the common good. Trump has no Weberian conviction orienting him. His lies are indiscriminate, absurd, vindictive, cruel, easily falsifiable and oftentimes completely unnecessary.
Hurled at the electorate with Gatling-gun rapidity, their purpose is to radically disorient the audience, leaving them unable to tell the difference between up and down, left and right, right and wrong. Herein lies their purpose. Only when the whole world has been turned topsy-turvy could Trump appear to be anything like a worthy candidate for the presidency.
It would not surprise me if Trump has ensnared himself in his own trap. He lies so much and so unreservedly, that he probably believes the things coming out of his mouth. These lies are the product of a disordered mind, like that of the tyrant in Book IX of Plato’s Republic, who thinks nothing of destroying politics to satisfy the drone-like desires that torment his soul.
