Gotham Diary:
Adorable
15 April 2013
¶ Frank Bruni’s piece in the Sunday Review (New York Times) yesterday, “Love, Love Them, Do,” burrows into a rather horribly interesting side-effect of political power: love gluttony. How many of the people who seek our votes pursue office simply to gratify the need for adoration? A need that, as the careers of several recently fallen idols establishes, reduces complex personality to an addicted, pleasure-seeking nub? Bruni writes about Anthony Weiner and James McGreevey, mostly, but he mentions Mark Sanford and John Edwards as well — and, of course, Bill Clinton. “What led them to run and what led them to stray were to some extent the same hunger. The same hormone.” Not cockiness or arrogance, not the belief that anything can be gotten away with. No: a mounting, insatiable need for affirmation, 24/7.
Lots of people besides politicians enjoy applause on a regular basis. Stage actors and other performing artists certainly thrive on ovation. For the most part, however, audiences applaud them because of what they do. Politicians only rarely receive this kind of applause. Most of politics is compromise, and nobody likes that, much less applauds it. The thunder of many hands clapping breaks upon politicians’ heads because of who they are, or seem to be. And there’s no denying that Americans are enthusiastic adorers, as long as it doesn’t cost anything.
Finally, there is the profound and, I’m afraid, universal conviction that anyone who looks good on television must be special. This prejudice is the result of decades of technical honing, as television producers have gotten better and better at keeping people who don’t look good on television off the screen. We are as addicted to television’s glamour as candidates are to praise from whatever source derived. Considered as an ecology, the elected and the electorate live in perfect symbiosis.