Honest Politician an Illusion

In politics the problem of trust often boils down to a question of authenticity. Is a politician the person he or she claims to be? Or are the candidates hiding their true personalities behind a mask? In trying to answer these questions we subject them to endless scrutiny, chipping away at the public persona, searching for the evasions and inconsistencies that suggest someone with something to hide. We do it because we feel we can’t trust people we don’t really know.

But it doesn’t work – as the current campaign shows, the relentless search for the person behind the mask doesn’t produce politicians we can trust, it simply heightens suspicions. Politicians subject to this sort of scrutiny don’t become more open, they become more careful, and often more evasive, trying to make sure the mask stays in place.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is currently struggling badly under these pressures – day after day both his friends and enemies are demanding he tell the public who he really is. Yet every attempt he makes to connect with voters by talking about his feelings and his inner beliefs just brings more accusations that he is putting it on. Brown is a stiff and somewhat reserved man, and he suffers in comparison with Tony Blair, who was better at appearing to speak from the heart. But by the end of his premiership Blair wasn’t trusted either – the British public had long since decided he seemed too good to be true.

So maybe we are asking the wrong question – instead of wanting to know whether politicians are telling us the truth about themselves, we should ask whether they are telling us the truth about politics, with all its unavoidable evasions and inconsistencies. The demand for authenticity focuses relentlessly on character but it misses the bigger picture, which is that politics is about what you do, not who you are.

We should accept that politicians have to put on an act. This sounds cynical, but it doesn’t have to be. We can still ask whether the act itself is believable, without demanding to know whether it represents the real person inside. A believable performance is one that holds together over time, and can survive all the different stresses and strains of high office. The best actors aren’t necessarily the ones who speak from the heart. Instead, they are often the ones who are most in control of what they are doing.

In the end, it’s a choice for the public and the media to make. If we think trust matters, because we want to know how different individuals will handle the challenges of office, then we need to stop demanding that the candidates tell us who they really are. That’s what breeds the cynicism, because it always leads to the disappointment of discovering they are not as good as they pretend to be. No one can survive the sort of relentless probing of personal integrity that now passes for an election campaign. Let them keep the masks in place, and let us just choose the mask we prefer.

David Runciman is staff fellow in Politics and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. His new book is "Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond."

By David Runciman  |  May 13, 2008; 8:54 AM ET
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