Curtains draw back, revealing a polished, wooden stage. On this stage stand actors. The audience awaits a show of Shakespearean civility with tame negotiations and eloquent language. Instead, the actors hurl insults with grandiose, inflated gestures. Their performance more closely resembles The Three Stooges, a slapstick farce far from the dignified production many might have expected many years before. Atop this stage, the actors of today’s performance are members of Congress. But this slapstick farce is not new. Today, we pathologize the performance of our current politics by romanticizing the civility of our past—in reality, this political performativity is foundational and something entirely distinct from increasing political polarization. By confusing the two, we distort the reality of today’s polarized politics.
Today, performativity rocks the core of American politics, often making politicians seem more like troupe members than leaders. Current forms of political advertising try to grab attention and create appeal, frequently in a comedic way, whether it be through Instagram posts mocking the deportation of illegal immigrants through cartoon, AI-generated images, or the mass reposting of images distorting the faces of political rivals. Although many point to the rise of social media as the origin of such performativity, that is not the case. In fact, this tendency for politicians to perform has always been present, even before the rise of mass media.
It might be easy to put the blame on modern-age technology for the rise in performative politics, but in reality, technology is merely a vehicle for communicating the performative gestures of politicians to the public, including members of Congress. Even before the rise of social media, we have seen congressional performance. During the Red Scare, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held highly publicized congressional hearings, investigating possible Communist agents. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) led the charge, accusing many of Communist involvement through nothing but unsubstantiated hearsay. These hearings capitalized on pathos over solid proof, with McCarthy playing the role of an actor—his abrasive manner and utilization of hand gestures riling up the people over a fear of possible Communist spies. McCarthy’s reign of terror only ended after he was censured when the US government revoked his ability to perform. However, McCarthy is far from the only example of performative congressional politics.
Congressional politics, despite its “dull” reputation amongst many Americans, has always been about putting on a show. This phenomenon was even further encouraged with the invention of the C-SPAN networks, which have televised live congressional proceedings beginning with the House of Representatives in 1979 and later the Senate in 1986. With this, the public has been given an even closer viewing point into politics. Today, political scientists Elliott Ash and Gloria Gennaro examined how the public televising of congressional chambers can alter behavior. They find that when C-SPAN viewership is high, members of Congress tend to increase their use of emotional rhetoric. Additionally, the use of signs as demonstratives in speeches also exists in Congress, as seen in President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress at the beginning of the year, where members like Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) held a sign saying, “This is not normal.” Other Congress members followed suit with signs like “MUSK STEALS,” “SAVE MEDICAID,” and “FALSE” displayed across the Democratic side. Despite congressional rules which can attempt to prohibit subjectively “disorderly behavior,” Democrats rebelled to signal their disagreement with the Republican agenda.
Today, we also see unabashed disrespect, often through blatant congressional insult, a strategy of conflict many politicians pursue in hopes of making headlines and gaining publicity. For example, Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) recently addressed disabled Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” which caused consternation in the disabled community. In our highly publicized world, any publicity is good publicity. Often, diversionary insults further consolidate the two polar groups, but only with a deepening chasm between them. Congressional performativity, which often takes the form of offensive crudity and insults, elicits negative reactions from the public. Yet this longstanding performativity easily becomes confounded with the more recent rise in polarization.
Behind the stage of performative politics and conflict, there is more to unpack. Polarization unfairly garners criticism for its association with a naturally more critical climate of performativity. Many perceive this as a political inability to communicate effectively with each other. Many critics of polarization point to the decrease in the amount of legislation passed with each new Congress. However, they neglect to note that with the decrease in the number of bills passed, there has been an increase in the length of the legislation due to the popularization of omnibus bills since the 1980s. In reality, omnibus bills, and longer legislation in general, can reduce the number of votes required to pass legislation and sometimes ease the burden on congressional committees by lumping different pieces of legislation together. For example, in 2021, Congress passed H.R.133, The Consolidated Appropriations Act, a crucial omnibus bill that funded government operations and sent out Covid-19 relief quickly in one fell swoop. Omnibus bills, which may counter the claim of inefficiency by reducing the passage of legislation, can remove the lens of villainization from political polarization. In the end, the trend toward the passage of fewer pieces of legislation does not necessarily indicate the dereliction of congressional duties. Polarization does not necessarily mean inefficiency, even when performativity worries citizens about the conflictual nature of politics today.
Other misdirected critics target polarization under the guise of inefficient government spending, an outcome often identified with the practice of “logrolling.” Logrolling, when members of Congress trade votes to receive votes on their own legislation, has become a feature of our divided Congress. Although many perceive logrolling as fundamentally inefficient, as it allows the passage of budgetary legislation that would not have been passed with complete negotiation, logrolling can be an important tool for garnering bipartisan collaboration. With logrolling, even polarized senators can intertwine their interests. During the passage of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (1956), members of Congress partook in bargaining similar to logrolling, in which rural and urban districts negotiated to each receive funds for their own regional interests, leading to its eventual passage. In the end, it aided the whole nation by upgrading the transportation system in the United States.
Additionally, the more newfound polarization often attacked in place of the constant performativity can also be viewed as a strategic tool—one that Conservative politicians have used for the last 50 years to consolidate their base around the villainization of the Democratic party. Today, all political parties utilize this new political device within the congressional toolbox. What better is there to unite your own side than to identify an enemy who requires such unification to fight? At the intersection of polarization and performativity lies the elicitation of an emotional response from a public that feels they have to choose sides—a public possibly more politically attentive as a result.
American politics, especially in our modernizing world, always seems to be undergoing changes, making our politics unrecognizable compared to the politics of our country’s origin. What many people misperceive as congressional polarization often can be attributed instead to performativity—a tendency to perform that is not newly developed but is now even more apparent in the presence of a technology that allows a more exposed, transparent, and unfiltered view of the true nature of our congressional politics.