The Politics of Performance: How We Turned Our Leaders Into Entertainers and What It Costs Us
Somewhere along the line, our political discourse became more about sound bites, zingers, and one-liners than policy, governance, and progress. We traded substance for spectacle, treating politics like a reality TV show where the most entertaining contestant wins. Instead of choosing leaders to govern, we elect personalities to entertain us, forgetting that their job is not to make us laugh or trend on Twitter—but to govern. And this shift, as seemingly harmless as it feels in the short term, is costing us more than we know.
We’ve seen it with increasing frequency: politicians who thrive not on well-considered policies but on their ability to outrage, amuse, and distract. Our elections have become more about who’s most likely to "own the libs" or "trigger the conservatives" than about the candidates’ ability to solve our problems. Public office isn’t a game show. The viral moments that dominate our feeds aren’t where the real work happens, but they’re increasingly what we expect—and demand—of those we send to Washington, state houses, and city councils. How did we get here?
The Entertainment Era of Politics
The rise of social media amplified this phenomenon, but we can trace the entertainment-first approach back further. It didn’t start with Donald Trump, but he embodied and perfected the art of turning political office into a stage. Part of his allure was how he broke every rule and entertained his base, drawing millions to his rallies more like a rock star than a president. But Trump wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. We had glimpses of it before—from Ronald Reagan, a former actor, to Bill Clinton’s saxophone performance on "The Arsenio Hall Show." It’s not that these figures were unqualified, but their appeal often transcended politics. The danger lies in mistaking charisma for competency, in assuming that a good show equates to good governance.
We have to ask ourselves: When did we begin looking to politicians for entertainment, and when did we stop expecting them to govern? Maybe it’s when our political media became more about debates framed like sports matches, pitting teams of red against blue. Maybe it’s when we let late-night talk shows and memes drive our perceptions of candidates. Or maybe it’s when we decided that policy was too boring for prime time and that leadership was best performed, not practiced.
The Pitfalls of Political Celebrity
The shift toward political entertainment creates dangerous pitfalls. First, it trivializes the seriousness of governing. Lawmaking is hard work, filled with nuance and compromise, and it requires a depth of understanding and experience that performance politics inherently lacks. Yet, if politicians feel the pressure to entertain, their focus shifts from solving problems to gaining attention. This breeds an environment where populism thrives, and decisions are made based on what’s popular in the moment rather than what's right for the long haul.
Second, when we seek out entertainment from our leaders, we encourage extremism. Entertainers thrive on spectacle, and in politics, the spectacle often takes the form of inflammatory rhetoric. The more outrageous, the better. This pushes candidates to the fringes, where they can capture attention by being as polarizing as possible. Centrist voices—the ones more likely to work across the aisle and create sustainable change—get drowned out because moderation doesn’t make for good TV. And in this environment, compromise, the backbone of effective governance, becomes a dirty word.
Lastly, the entertainment-politics blend diminishes accountability. Entertainers aren’t held accountable for policy failures—they’re only judged on their performance. The same happens with politicians. When we focus on the sizzle, we stop paying attention to the steak. We let policy failures slide as long as our leaders keep us engaged, distracted, and entertained. We stop holding them to the standards of governance, because we’ve been conditioned to care more about the drama than the outcome.
How Do We Get Back?
The first step to fixing this is recognizing the problem. We must stop expecting entertainment from our leaders and start demanding leadership again. That means tuning out the spectacle and focusing on the issues. We need to encourage politicians to communicate ideas, not just insults. We must also hold the media accountable. As long as we reward the political circus with ratings, the show will go on.
More than anything, we have to remember what government is for. Politics should never be boring, but it should always be purposeful. The stakes are too high to turn our elections into popularity contests. We need leaders who understand that governance isn’t a game, and it’s certainly not a reality TV show. It’s messy, complicated, and slow—but that’s the work of democracy.
It’s up to us to shift the culture. If we stop rewarding theatrics and demand better from our leaders, the performance ends. But as long as we tune in for the show, that’s all we’ll get: entertainment. And in a world where climate change, economic inequality, and global instability are urgent realities, we need more than a good performance—we need good governance. Let’s turn off the TV, step away from the spectacle, and refocus on the issues that truly matter.
Because in the end, the job of politicians isn’t to entertain us. It’s to serve us.
