Look out, phonies and fakes: “Authentic” is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023. From celebrities searching for their “authentic selves” to the flood of fabricated content on social media to the exploding use of artificial intelligence to create equally artificial images and expressions, authenticity is increasingly scarce, which makes it increasingly valuable.
Though social media and AI may be recent innovations, this is nothing new for politics. For decades candidates have been judged by their ability to project authenticity to voters. But while authenticity is sometimes important — you really want to know whether your new Rolex was actually made by Rolex — just as often it’s a trap. The more we obsess over authenticity, the more we can lose sight of what really matters.
It’s worth asking what authenticity is actually supposed to produce.
Most of us have an instinctive reaction against politicians whose presentation seems too practiced, their words too contrived. When every syllable uttered by Mike Pence sounds like it was rehearsed a dozen times in front of a mirror, the result is off-putting whether you agree with the words or not.
But that doesn’t mean Pence is less honest than other politicians. All politicians are performers. The “authentic” performance is the one that doesn’t seem like a performance at all. In other words, it’s a convincing performance, enacted with natural ease, carried out by a skilled performer.
When your only opportunity to hear a national politician talk was when he shouted from a stage a hundred yards away, authenticity was irrelevant. Newspapers didn’t run headlines saying, “Lincoln May Be Right on Slavery, But Is He Authentic Enough?”
Today we see our politicians on all our screens, talking in intimate settings. So just as the transition from stage to screen eventually produced a more naturalistic style of acting, we demand a more naturalistic performance from politicians — less “Four score and seven years ago” and more “I feel your pain.”
And journalists police authenticity with vigor, ruthlessly punishing the candidate whose performance doesn’t seem authentic enough. Here’s a secret: When reporters eviscerate candidates for their supposed lack of authenticity, we’re sending a self-congratulatory message about our own realness. Unlike those phony politicians, we know how you’re supposed to eat a cheesesteak! We will unmask these phonies and tell you who’s real and who isn’t.
So the better actors flourish. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush excelled at seeming authentic and relatable; George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry and Mitt Romney didn’t. Hillary Clinton especially did not — there may have no other politician in history who was pilloried as much for her supposed lack of authenticity — and Donald Trump, unquestionably the most dishonest president in American history, did. Talk to Trump voters and you’ll hear endless tributes to Trump’s authenticity. His life experience is as distant from most Americans’ as any politician’s could be, yet his supporters find something genuine in his crassness and venom.
Here’s another inconvenient truth: It’s not just the politicians who are inauthentic.
Those ugly parts of Trump’s personality are certainly sincere. Yet when a politician such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tries to bring out that ugliness in himself, he can’t muster the same panache. So DeSantis has tried to achieve authenticity by following stereotypes. Small towns are authentic; big cities aren’t. Beer is authentic; wine isn’t. Country music is authentic; classical isn’t.
In other words, authenticity is supposedly blue-collar and downscale. That’s why DeSantis wrote in his campaign book that “I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay, but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep.” DeSantis didn’t like the image of his hometown, so he hand-picked a different “cultural” home — all in the name of authenticity.
DeSantis is hardly the only one locating the authentic in the Rust Belt. You may have heard Joe Biden say that he hails from Scranton, Pennsylvania, where his dear old dad passed on to him a rich legacy of homespun aphorisms. Biden pulls it off (if only through sheer repetition), while DeSantis’ clumsy grasping for blue-collar cred shows that nothing highlights inauthenticity like failed attempts to appear authentic.
Yet it’s worth asking what authenticity is actually supposed to produce. More thoughtful policies? Greater competence? A firmer commitment to principles?
Authenticity guarantees none of these things. We can all think of politicians we hated who nevertheless conveyed authenticity (even if we tell ourselves that deep down they were liars) and insincere ones we thought did pretty good jobs.
Here’s another inconvenient truth: It’s not just the politicians who are inauthentic. As sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out in the 1950s, we all have “frontstage” selves we present to the world and “backstage” selves we keep for ourselves and intimates. No one is exactly the same person at their job or on social media as they are with friends or at home. Now try having a bunch of surly reporters follow you around for a year recording your every word and gesture and see how “authentic” you seem.
So even if we recoil from certain politicians because they sound insincere, we should acknowledge that it’s a subjective judgment — one that’s just about vibes — and not a particularly rational one. It would be better to ask what they plan to do with the office they seek and whether they can pull it off. Those questions will do much more to get past superficial appearances than asking which candidate seems more real.