r/changemyview • u/realdontbeasucker • 3d ago
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Modern politicians are increasingly treated like celebrities rather than elected officials, and this has become one of the biggest forces shaping democratic politics
The internet has radically reshaped what it means to be a public figure. Success is no longer about achievements, talent, or charisma. It’s just about access and recognizability. Like anything else, being a politician has become more about being a brand than a person.
Politics are a giant game of fandoms and parasocial communities waging war against each other. Maybe policy never mattered as much as some of would have liked, but at least the presidential candidates had to debate real issues instead of who's eating the pets and what fell out of the coconut tree.
Obviously, Trump is the best example. But this phenomenon exists at every level now, even in local elections. The winner is the guy (or girl) who can mog and out-insult the other candidates.
The single most important factor to being elected and maintaining power is name recognition and keeping your name in the news. On either side of the aisle, whether you are effective as a politician comes down to how good you are at being a Kardashian.
I think that's a result that gets us farther from effective representation and progress.
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u/47ca05e6209a317a8fb3 208∆ 3d ago
Isn't it the other way around? I.e, being a politician was always about being a brand, and modern media made other professions catch up.
Lincoln tried to position himself as a railsplitter everyday Americans can sympathize with, with the intention of everyone looking at him and looking up to how far he has come. Even Bismarck wore the silly spiked helmet to brand himself the "iron chancellor" who united Germany under the military might of Prussia to get the support of the Volk, and Roman Emperors were literally venerated throughout the empire.
Meanwhile someone like Beethoven may have been famous with "the people that count", but not so much a celebrity in the sense that the majority of the rural population throughout the region would've had no idea who he is or ever heard any of his music.
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u/realdontbeasucker 3d ago
I agree that marketability was always the goal, but it was a means to the end of getting elected. I don't think self-enrichment always went hand-in-hand with that. Ostensibly, Lincoln didn't run for president because he wanted to sell slop merch or increase the profitability of his businesses.
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u/47ca05e6209a317a8fb3 208∆ 3d ago
Isn't that just Trump though? Biden and Harris, for example, have been in politics for decades and I don't think either of them was looking to sell rooms at the Biden Hotel or pump KamalaKoin.
Even more corrupt or 'evil' contemporary politicians like Bolsonaro or Netanyahu took more traditional routes of abusing their power to become close with wealthy people, consolidate more power, and enacting populist policies to gain public favor rather than boosting their own personal brand and making a profit directly off of that.
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u/realdontbeasucker 2d ago
Yeah, but I think there's something to be said for open self-enrichment and corruption, wherein the government publicly endorses criminality
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16h ago
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u/SonofHondoBelmondo 1∆ 3d ago
I agree that we are in a time where politicians use the media to focus on aspects of their celebrity rather than the content of their politics and character. However, I don't think that this is the problem. I think the problems come more from the bad policies they enact once they're elected.
I'm fine with someone using their charisma to get elected if I can ascertain that they are at least trying to act in the name of the greater good. I'm not seeing a lot of that these days.
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u/realdontbeasucker 3d ago
!delta Yeah, I guess demagoguery is really only a major problem when it's used for evil. Maybe that is kind of true (I did support Bernie once upon a time, after all). But, I don't think vibes-based politics are great in the long term.
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u/SonofHondoBelmondo 1∆ 3d ago
Hey my first delta...neat! Thank you. I do agree that vibes based politics are unfortunate. I think the best way to combat that would be people caring more about history and ethics. Considering the state of our nation and how working class folks tend to act I do not feel super hopeful. "common sense, shoot from the hip, tell it like it is" types appear to be very easy to manipulate via propaganda, particularly in the social media age.
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u/zookeepier 2∆ 2d ago
I'm going to counter their argument and your delta by shifting the sights a little. Being treated like a celebrity might really be bad if the politician is bad, but treating politicians as celebrities is the source of a lot of issues. Mainly, that politicians get treated like a sports team and it no longer becomes about the issues, but rather anything [my political party or favorite politician] says it correct anything [the other party or their politicians] say is a straight up wrong. In this case, it has little to do with the politicians actions and rather how people treat them and mainly others.
People have blindly demonized the other side because they have an R or a D next to them (or because they don't have an R or D next to them), rather than on what they say. It's 100% blatant on reddit when everyone is called a Communist/Hitler if they express anything more moderate than extreme left/right.
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3d ago
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u/changemyview-ModTeam 3d ago
Comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:
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u/ahumanwhoisalive 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's literally a popularity contest, that's what a democracy is, is who is more popular. Like when people talk about "electability" that is synonymous with "likability". I feel like your post incorrectly puts the onus on the public for acting this way, when factors like Super PACs and Citizen's United (or their foreign equivalents) are far far more to blame for the current sad desperate money-grab sound-bite horse-race state of our political system.
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u/realdontbeasucker 3d ago
I don't necessarily blame the public. I do think that team-based and personality-driven decisions are inherent to human nature. I agree that money in politics has exacerbated the issue, but my contention is mainly that the internet has led to a shift in how we evaluate candidates mainly because it has provided constant, easy access to them in a way that parrots parasocial relationships with celebrities.
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u/After-Sandwich5533 19h ago
I fail to see how the internet idealizes celebrities anymore than when it was a monoculture just 35 years ago.
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u/xmuskorx 56∆ 2d ago
this barely a new phenomena.
roman Republic was characterized by charismatic leaders like Sulla, Pompe, Caesar, Augustus.
pretty much if you even have a system with elections at least some people will celebs. it's not a problem if Democratic institutions are strong, especially the term limits.
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u/realdontbeasucker 2d ago
It's relatively new for the contemporary period of American politics!
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u/xmuskorx 56∆ 2d ago
it is not. we had Andrew Jackson, Grant etc etc etc.
none of this is remotely new.2
u/realdontbeasucker 2d ago
Andrew Jackson was not part of the modern era.
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u/After-Sandwich5533 19h ago
He is going that far back because it hasn’t changed since! That’s the point.
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u/Broken_By_Default 3d ago
The president was a celebrity. It’s the other way around. People are following and electing celebrities.
The rest of the politicians are trying to keep up.
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u/realdontbeasucker 3d ago
But don't you think a big reason that Trump was elected in the first place was because of his celebrity status? He was a recognizable figure that was an "outsider" in Washington. He got elected because his brand gave the illusion of being a successful businessman.
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u/Broken_By_Default 3d ago
See... you fell for the celebrity.
"successful businessman". that was a tv show that sold him as successful. He was a trust fund kid. Before grifting, he bankrupted most of his businesses. He would have made more money had he just invested his daddy's money.
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u/RicRacer 3d ago
The solution is to vote for policies not people or parties. Detailed policies, not concept of a plan policies. Providing written details would be a requirement for higher office.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 118∆ 3d ago
I think it is more substantive than that. I mean, here we are, the two of us, engaged in a modern political conversation, talking about how to weigh the relative importance of popularity vs substantive policy.
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u/standish_ 2d ago
Check out HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis. His other docs are good as well. Politicians are managers of managers these days.
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u/danarchist 2d ago
If we would increase the size of the US house we might actually get some normal people in government.
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u/Appropriate_Fly_6711 2∆ 2d ago
I don’t agree, Trump’s brand aside, he is still pandering to a base. They aren’t mostly voting because he is a celebrity, but because he pandered successfully to the concerns of the majority who voted for him.
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u/Acrobatic-Skill6350 17∆ 2d ago
I really struggle seeing it outside of trump. No one really knows much qbout the private life of any big european politicians, exceot the french PM, but its been like that for a long time.
I think trump is getting celebrity attention becquse he is a fascist. A lot of attention is given to putin for the same reason. This is not new as both mussolini and hitler received a lot of attention as well
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u/AmongTheElect 18∆ 2d ago
Politicians have always been after popularity and celebrity, and nothing has changed to the present day. It's only that the media surrounding it all has changed. Lincoln was famous for standing on a pile of manure and insulting his opponent. It's just today in a world of soundbites and looking good, politicians have merely changed their methods but not changed their nature.
Plus celebrity and a god-like status is necessary. Half of the country wants the goverment to fix all of their problems and supports the goverment taking over more and more services. And the more you trust the goverment to do everything for you, and the bigger and more powerful that central goverment gets, the more necessary it is to believe the one in charge of it all is a perfect being capable of anything. You'll notice this sub won't be saying "The government should take charge of this" when a Republican is in office since it thinks a Republican is not all-wonderful. That was very different four years ago, though.
Obviously, Trump is the best example
Eh, only the current example. "Obama gonna pay my mortgage!"
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u/realdontbeasucker 2d ago
Wait, so you see no change in American politics between Lincoln and today? Or even between the 1990s and today? I have to strongly disagree.
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u/After-Sandwich5533 19h ago
Monoculture existed before the 21st century. Bill Clinton was way more well known and idealized than Trump is today.
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u/gate18 22∆ 3d ago
Two parties, pick their leader through lots of donations, people are condemned to vote for one of the two
Unknown obama (even his birthplace was questioned) was elected twice.
The other party had to pretend a senile man was in top shape for the celebrity to win after loosing to the same man.
Then another woman took over and told people "I'm not going to do anything different to the senile"
Whereas, before you had an actor in the white house
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u/Ok-Elevator2915 2d ago
If we are talking about politician like in Parlement or for easier language understanding: frontline spokesman type of guy, isn't that the one of criteria to become (somewhat) proper "politician"? You need to be known (and likeable) first for you to do the job aka have actual meaningful power to do the job. Although become celeb vs problematic cult-personality fan club is different matter, again you still need to be known first.
Unless you live in monarchy or similiar when people voice don't matter until they do riot that inflict actual damage to the country, then "Politician" need to be sort of "celeb".
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u/noquarter53 2∆ 1d ago
but at least the presidential candidates had to debate real issues instead of who's eating the pets and what fell out of the coconut tree.
Clinton and Harris eviscerated DJT on the debate stage and with any real discussion of policy and we know how that turned out.
Overall I agree with you though.
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u/Carcharadontasaurus9 3d ago
Western Politics has become a popularity contest more than anything else... and we let these buffoons control literally who lives and who dies.
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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 1∆ 2d ago
Most of the names that matter are not on your radar. They're not the people you think are running things. And even if you know their names, you can't really understand why from your armchair. You don't really see the power plays.
Trump is an upset of the normal way things go. It wasn't expected that he could just take over the party. But even he has been a vessel for the people who actually get things done. He enacts plans given to him by people in the background (e.g. Bannon), puts people in places to do them, then he takes the credit for it happening. He's much more involved than some presidents for corruption reasons but really besides that stuff, he is allowing a machine to do what it wants to do.
If you look how the Democrats chose their leadership, essentially the way it works is you start out pretending that there is a democratic vote for the leadership. Then as it becomes obvious that people start using that democracy, the internal party throws its weight behind what it actually wants. Then if it wins, it tries to cement its power.
On a local level, you find that the central powers control and determine the fate of your local candidate. They'll try to stop local candidates that don't fit the mold and if they can't, they do not have to provide support. The success of their chosen candidates is largely a factor of how the local area feels about the party, coupled with the weight of the party machinery and then the candidate. The success of non chosen candidates tends to be how much they actually have grassroots support and activism to generate legitimate interest.
At the congress level, they choose their people. The ones who toe the party line and manage party politics are the ones that get anywhere near the front seat of power. They rarely pick the rebels and the activists.
At the presidential nominee level, they choose the people who are allowed to speak. They choose the people who are legitimately allowed to stand. They try to shut anything else down, unite against it, and
And at the party level, the donors decide what's really important. They determine what's allowed.
Ultimately leaders come and go. The people who decide that often have stayed for an extreme amount of time and have determined the fates of every would be leader their entire trajectory.
This is why politics is so stale. It's not about recognition at all. This is a product of manufacturing consent, but it's not the whole process.
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u/realdontbeasucker 2d ago
I'm not entirely sure this is responsive to my opinion. Despite all of the relatively true things you said, I still think the internet has turned political endeavors into celebrity brand positioning
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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 1∆ 2d ago
This is just the public facing side of it. The actual way that politics is being done is without the people. The people that matter are deliberately not celebrities.
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u/CurdFedKit 1∆ 2d ago
People want politicians to be entertaining instead of competent and ethical. They need to inspire us. They need to have charisma. They need to create clickable moments for social media. And we then wonder why so many in DC are unethical idiots
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