on the boehner waterworks

Music: Big Star: Third/Sister Lovers (1975)

In a under-read but brilliantly prescient essay titled, "The Celebrity Politician" (a related but less extensive article is here), John Street argues that politics abandoned the "market model" introduced by Joseph Schumpeter decades ago. Traditional wisdom likened political campaigning to marketing, the candidate a "product" to be "sold" to consumers. Politics has always been a spectacle, but Street suggests the supplication of good reasons worked well with the older market model. In postmodernity, politics has shifted to a "celebrity model" in our times; what matters is circulation---getting noticed, being talked about, aligning catchword signifiers with image and affect. As I noted at a gathering earlier this week, Palin understands the model very well; arguably, the Obama campaign did too and exploited McCain's reliance on the tried-and-no-longer-true market model in the last election.

Further evidence of Street's prescience is third in line for the presidency, our new house speaker, John Boehner, who was featured this Sunday on 60 Minutes. It was a biograph (not biography, "biograph"---a short feature) designed to simply present an unbiased answer to "who is this guy?" Despite many critiques since the spot aired, I thought the program did a good job of giving the viewing audience a sense of this guy and what he is "all about." It humanized Boehner, and I very much appreciated that effort (unlike, say, the reality show for Palin; now that is definitely a promotional vehicle). In general, he's all about celebrity or spectacle politics, about which in a moment. What I didn't know about was the man's tendency for sentimentality: this dude can cry at the drop of certain hats. Not any hats. Certain hats. One of them is any mention of his wife's support. Another is visiting schools. Another is the concept of the "American Dream." For example, at his recent acceptance speech, when he advances his political vision, the sniffles come (about 7:40):

Leslie Stahl probed him about being an "emotional guy." When asked if he was trying not to "choke up" during the interview, his response was admirable: "No. What you see is what you get. I know who I am. I am comfortable in my own skin. And, everybody who knows me knows that I get emotional about certain things." As a person who is "sensitive"---I cry if I watch Finding Nemo or when Susanna and the Magical Orchestra puts out a new album (but I will try not to)---I can appreciate Boehner's embrace of his "emotionalism." There's a lot to say about what I've been describing as a new permissiveness for intimacy in politics today---much of it good. I'm kinda impressed that one of our most powerful politicians today cries publically, and is unapologetic about it. That much is cool. Boys do cry, and that's been a hard-won observation that is increasingly accepted. But---and you knew there was a butt here---like anything, new permissibilities entail new possibilities . . . for harm. Boehner represents, in a some weird way, an emerging biopolitical publicity, and that means with every progressivism comes a certain oppressive danger.

Boehner is a white male. Therein is the thumbnail for danger.

Generally, when speaking of biopolitcs Foucault described the various ways in which life itself was regulated---that the social functioned much like an organism, and to privilege the rational subject or deity as a puppet master was a rather cynical way to think about the totality (overlooking, for example, how the oppressive enables the progressive, how self-surveillance promotes healthy lifestyles, and so on). I'm partial to a Deleuzian reading of the biopolitical, so my tendency is to amplify the role of affect: biopolitics concerns the pastoral not simply in terms of the care of the flock, but the orchestration of affect---cinema of the body politic, so to speak. Biopolitical publicity concerns the orchestration of affect via spectacle for a candidate that means to shepherd, or for a policy that concerns the promotion of life in some way. Biopolitical publicity is not based on misdirection or deception; rather, it's based on earnest conviction, on feeling, on the gut.

Watching the Boehner interview I got to thinking about how he so neatly illustrated the concept interpellation: there is no question the man is earnest, that his tears are genuine, and that his belief in the "American Dream" is soul deep. There is no question because the body in convulsion is not a lie, even when an actor does it; feeling is feeling, even faked (I realize this too is an argument to be had, but let me take it as axiomatic for the moment). The problem with the right---with all political leanings---is not that folks are conspiratorial or deceitful or "lying to the American people." Hell, as more and more is written about the Bush administration and Bush, it's clear that deceit was not the real problem. Rather, the problem was in his gut--- that affective conviction underwrites decision; conviction first, rhetoric later. This is the work of ideology, a concept that we wrongly associate with "the idea." Ideology is about how it feels, an innermost, bodily orientation to "what feels right." Interpellation gives a meaning to the feeling.

Before Adam Smith was saddled with The Wealth of Nations fame, he was more known for being a proponent of "sentiment ethics": we are moved to moral action because we respond the visible and verbal (aural) pain or pleasure of others. Recent research on "mirror neurons" and cognition is starting to bear this out: our bodies respond to other bodies; if other bodies are in pain, our bodies respond---we take on the feelings of others. It makes sense, then, that Smith's vision of the civil society would be advanced so faithfully---the dude generally believed that our "sentiment of sympathy" would be the moral check on commerce. Of course, that didn't play out because of the complexities that psychoanalysis teaches us about affect: evil can feel good too. Doh! Curses! Nevertheless, my point is that Boehner comes in at precisely this juncture: the dude is emotional and I think he is earnest with those waterworks; the problem is that feelings can be wrong, and we can persuade folks to feel wrongly---or rather, that what they feel is Y instead of X.

We have a tendency as a people to believe that affect is genuine, beyond symbolic structuring. We have a tendency to believe that affect can cut through misguided thinking. Much of the scholarship of affect is guilty of this tendency (Massumi included); we are romanticizing creatures, after all. "If it feels right," then it must be right. "All you need is love?" Er, that's problematic too.

Boehner is, in the biopolitical sense, a Beatle. That's why he's so endearing to many. And this is where Street's insight into the "political celebrity" really takes off: if it's really not about good reasons, but affect and circulating the suck-to signifier, stirring feeling and then saying, "you're feeling X." Many of us raised evangelical Baptists or Pentecostals will find the structure familiar: after a rousing sermon that takes us to our "point of pain" and deepest sense of hurt, the preacher tells us that hurt we are feeling is actually a call from Christ to be saved. It's powerful stuff. Nevertheless, this way of thinking about the political appeal is the opposite to the hegemonic model in political science: rational choice, rent seeking, and so forth---that old market logic. The celebrity model replaces reason with the irrational, or at least, makes reason the province of meaning that is parasitic on the affective or the body-in-feeling. Now, I don't mean to suggest this is a one way street, that affect always precedes the signifier. Clearly rhetoric stimulates affect as well. I'm simply saying that politics works primarily at the level of feeling or that affect is primary.

Boehner's tearing up at every mention of the "American Dream" speaks to how deeply he has internalized that particular fantasy. I daresay all of us in the states have internalized it because it is the foundational fantasy of the primary educational system. We teach "the dream" at a very young age as a form of internal motivation. It's only when students get into college (or AP classes in high school) that we begin to question and critique this fantasy. Of course, at the college age we also have to battle the Evil Oprah Empire that resists the critique with exception proving the rule. Nevertheless, the "American Subject"---our basic identities as U.S. citizens---assume the notions of meritocracy and bootstrapping. Even Boehner acknowledges this, however unwittingly: when Stahl presses him to explain why he can no longer visit schools because he gets to emotional, he said: “making sure these kids have a shot at the American dream, like I did, is important.” The "American Dream" fantasy is soul-deep, indeed.

Here's why Boehner's biopolitical publicity is troublesome: as Dyer noted about "the star" decades ago, the idealized public figure embodies the fantasy of "making it," so that we can live vicariously through her, since we can never achieve it ourselves. Boehner has embodied this fantasy for all the reasons that are familiar (he's a white guy and has easier access, etc.); he cries at every mention of the "American Dream" because he has achieved it (or so he thinks). And calling for its defense is something of a no brainer, in both senses. This is ideological interpellation on a stick: by appealing to the American Dream, Boehner continues the status quo, impeding social change and, paradoxically, the "equal opportunity for all" he claims to champion.

The rub, of course, is that he believes he has done this by his own effort; the sentimental tears are tiny mirrors. He does not see that he lives in an environment structured such that he is more likely to embody "the dream" over and above others with the same skills and drive, but of different structural/social station---gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on. He suffers from an over-reliance on feelings as truth, as genuine, as the seat of authenticity. It's obviously narcissism. To assume one's personal story can be projected onto the Other---"personal responsibility" and all---is to fail to truly reckon with the different circumstances and plights of others. Boehner cries at the potential he sees in a school-child's "innocent" face, but it's his own story that he sees. And when one's own story and "feeling" is the touchstone of truth, well, anyone who is different is in trouble.

Boehner shall soon become one of the most powerful (and hated) politicians in the West. He seems to misattribute personal lack for hope. He seems to mistake white guilt for empathy. God help us.