The Observer: The role of a lifetime

“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare says. “And all the men and women merely players.” Most people are largely unaware of the many roles we play (e.g., spouse, parent, friend, employee, etc.) but some roles are so all-encompassing that they dominate the person’s identity always and everywhere. This is surely the case with celebrities and politicians who are constantly on stage.

I began thinking about this last week while watching the drama playing out in Washington as Congress voted fifteen times to elect a Speaker of the House. Republicans hold a slender nine-vote majority in the House, so they need to maintain serious discipline over every party member — a quality much in absence last week.

Kevin McCarthy, the happy warrior and leader of his conference, was the heir apparent but rebellion within the ranks forced ballot after ballot before he could claim victory. A victory that required him to cave into the demands of just 20 members of his party’s delegation. Most of the electioneering was like watching paint dry but there were moments when the session was a three-ring circus.

Around midnight last Friday, between the fourteenth and fifteenth ballots, an angry confrontation between McCarthy and Florida firebrand legislator Matt Gaetz caught the attention of everyone still watching. A fistfight nearly broke out on the floor. Caught on film, a photograph of one Republican representative physically restraining another will go down in history as the iconic image of American politics in 2023. This does not bode well for anyone.Even in its duller moments, however, watching House members milling about, chin-wagging, back-slapping and glad-handing was like taking in a play. There were scripted speeches, repeated grandstanding on the floor of the House and in front of the cameras (for the benefit of constituents back home). You could imagine you were watching actors literally on the national stage.

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Make no mistake: politicians and elected representatives are performers. Some remain minor players, placidly seated on the periphery while others take center stage; exiting and re-entering after giving interviews to build their resumes, enhance their profiles and improve their fundraising potential for dreams of future casting calls.The interplay of the roles of actor and politician may seem farfetched but remember Ronald Reagan or better yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who appeared in the same chamber last month to ask for money. His address wasn’t just a speech. It was an Academy Award performance. Back in 2015, Zelenskyy was a television comedian playing the role of Ukraine’s most unlikely President. Talk about life imitating art!

So, what is the role of a politician? Is it to serve the public, build their party, move up the ladder? Yes, but it is something else beside. It is also to inspire confidence, to communicate, to show empathy, to work with others and build consensus. Good actors are often skilled at these things.

Maybe we should be actively drafting actors to run instead of encouraging career politicians. The historic difficulty Kevin McCarthy had getting his role of a lifetime was because he is neither a very good actor nor a particularly principled politician. He gave away the store to less than ten percent of his conference (which dwindled to just two extremist holdouts in the final vote) in order to fulfill his personal ambitions. If he understood that he is first and foremost an actor, he might have had an easier time of it.

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Given the premise that good actors might be better at politics than professional politicians, I had to ask myself: who might make a credible president? I thought immediately of Martin Sheen, Robin Wright, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kiefer Sutherland, Meryl Streep and Samuel Jackson; all of whom have played fictional presidents.

Then of Denzel Washington, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Hanks, Dwayne Johnson, Jon Stewart and Oprah Winfrey whose names have surfaced from time to time as possible campaigners. Here is the advantage of running an actor: actors usually know when they are lying; they know they are playing characters; they know they are working from a script.

Politicians like the last two Republican holdouts (Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz) don’t always distinguish between truth and fiction; between the role of entertainer and that of politician; between public service and personal ambition; between the good of the nation and the good of their careers.

Bad actors make bad public servants but perhaps good actors can become good politicians and even better-elected officials.

Ron McAllister is a sociologist and writer who lives in York.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The Observer: The role of a lifetime