Donald Trump’s election last year exposed an insidious politics of celebrity, one in which a redemptive personality is projected high above the slow toil of political parties and movements. As his latest tweets about Muslims confirm, this post-political figure seeks, above all, to commune with his entranced white nationalist supporters. Periodically offering them emotional catharsis, a powerful medium of self-expression at the White House these days, Trump makes sure that his fan base survives his multiple political and economic failures. This may be hard to admit but the path to such a presidency of spectacle and vicarious participation was paved by the previous occupant of the White House.
Barack Obama was the first “celebrity president” of the twenty-first century—“that is,” as Perry Anderson recently pointed out, “a politician whose very appearance was a sensation, from the earliest days of his quest for the Democratic nomination onwards: to be other than purely white, as well as good-looking and mellifluous, sufficed for that,” and for whom “personal popularity” mattered more than the fate of own party and policies.
Public life routinely features such sensations, figures in whom people invest great expectations based on nothing more than a captivation with their radiant personas. Youthful good looks, an unconventional marriage, and some intellectual showmanship helped turn Emmanuel Macron, virtually overnight, into the savior not just of France, but of Europe, too. Until the approval ratings of this dynamic millionaire collapsed, a glamour-struck media largely waived close scrutiny of his neoliberal faith in tax breaks for rich compatriots, and contempt for “slackers.”
Another example is Aung San Suu Kyi who, as a freedom fighter and prisoner of conscience, precluded any real examination of her politics, which have turned out to be abysmally sectarian, in tune with her electoral base among Myanmar’s Buddhist ethnic majority. Her personal sacrifices remained for too long the basis for assessing her political outlook, though the record of Robert Mugabe, among many other postcolonial leaders, had already proved that suffering for the cause of freedom is no guarantee of wise governance, and that today’s victims are likely to be tomorrow’s persecutors. (...)
The liberal Obama, however, was the greatest beneficiary of an age of rampant depoliticization, when public figures turned into blank receptacles and the urge to project private desires and frustrations onto them overrode the need to make sober political judgements. This craving for emotional communion was not confined to marginalized and voiceless citizens. Many writers and journalists closely identified with the literary intellectual they saw in Obama; they were thrilled to watch, I wrote in 2008, “one of their kind ascend to the West Wing,” and were seemingly unconcerned that “the overall decline in national fortunes” was likely to push their country “to the rancorous right.”
Obama continued to dazzle the literati even as he stepped up deportations of illegal immigrants and drone attacks, ruthlessly pursued whistle-blowers, and inaugurated the extrajudicial executions of American citizens. He exhorted African Americans to assume personal responsibility for their plight while absolving bankers of all responsibility for ruining the lives of millions of people. Yet, as with Trump and his loyal and captive audience today, support for Obama remained steadfast among African Americans and white liberals.
Obama’s supporters remain as defensive about their president as Trump’s fans are about theirs, even though Obama, kite-surfing with Richard Branson in the wake of Trump’s victory, and reassuring Wall Street with handsomely remunerated speeches, has affirmed his dedication to the one percent. But we should not be surprised and dismayed that Obama’s audacity of hope dwindled into some humdrum self-cherishing, or that Macron is now derided as “president of the rich.” The actual record of personality cults reveals the mendacity of hope. Real change always comes through the sustained struggles of countless people who often wish to remain unsung.
by Pankaj Mishra, NYRB | Read more:
Image:Jack Gruber/Pool/Reuters
[ed. Kennedy and Reagan would also be good examples.]
Barack Obama was the first “celebrity president” of the twenty-first century—“that is,” as Perry Anderson recently pointed out, “a politician whose very appearance was a sensation, from the earliest days of his quest for the Democratic nomination onwards: to be other than purely white, as well as good-looking and mellifluous, sufficed for that,” and for whom “personal popularity” mattered more than the fate of own party and policies.Public life routinely features such sensations, figures in whom people invest great expectations based on nothing more than a captivation with their radiant personas. Youthful good looks, an unconventional marriage, and some intellectual showmanship helped turn Emmanuel Macron, virtually overnight, into the savior not just of France, but of Europe, too. Until the approval ratings of this dynamic millionaire collapsed, a glamour-struck media largely waived close scrutiny of his neoliberal faith in tax breaks for rich compatriots, and contempt for “slackers.”
Another example is Aung San Suu Kyi who, as a freedom fighter and prisoner of conscience, precluded any real examination of her politics, which have turned out to be abysmally sectarian, in tune with her electoral base among Myanmar’s Buddhist ethnic majority. Her personal sacrifices remained for too long the basis for assessing her political outlook, though the record of Robert Mugabe, among many other postcolonial leaders, had already proved that suffering for the cause of freedom is no guarantee of wise governance, and that today’s victims are likely to be tomorrow’s persecutors. (...)
The liberal Obama, however, was the greatest beneficiary of an age of rampant depoliticization, when public figures turned into blank receptacles and the urge to project private desires and frustrations onto them overrode the need to make sober political judgements. This craving for emotional communion was not confined to marginalized and voiceless citizens. Many writers and journalists closely identified with the literary intellectual they saw in Obama; they were thrilled to watch, I wrote in 2008, “one of their kind ascend to the West Wing,” and were seemingly unconcerned that “the overall decline in national fortunes” was likely to push their country “to the rancorous right.”
Obama continued to dazzle the literati even as he stepped up deportations of illegal immigrants and drone attacks, ruthlessly pursued whistle-blowers, and inaugurated the extrajudicial executions of American citizens. He exhorted African Americans to assume personal responsibility for their plight while absolving bankers of all responsibility for ruining the lives of millions of people. Yet, as with Trump and his loyal and captive audience today, support for Obama remained steadfast among African Americans and white liberals.
Obama’s supporters remain as defensive about their president as Trump’s fans are about theirs, even though Obama, kite-surfing with Richard Branson in the wake of Trump’s victory, and reassuring Wall Street with handsomely remunerated speeches, has affirmed his dedication to the one percent. But we should not be surprised and dismayed that Obama’s audacity of hope dwindled into some humdrum self-cherishing, or that Macron is now derided as “president of the rich.” The actual record of personality cults reveals the mendacity of hope. Real change always comes through the sustained struggles of countless people who often wish to remain unsung.
by Pankaj Mishra, NYRB | Read more:
Image:Jack Gruber/Pool/Reuters
[ed. Kennedy and Reagan would also be good examples.]
