Performance, Theatricality and the US Presidency: The Currency of Distrust

The erosion of trust in politicians and political institutions is a major challenge in early twenty-first-century democratic politics, not least in the United States. This book argues that, rather than being a flaw or corruption, the potential for political distrust must be understood as an essential feature of representative democracy. Presenting the first sustained, and empirically backed, exploration of the function of performance within US presidential politics, Performance, Theatricality, and the U.S. Presidency shows that performance and distrust are interlinked and ineradicable elements of representative democracy. The book draws on key scholarship of political representation, rhetoric, and populism; on theories of performativity, theatricality, and acting; and on interviews the author conducted with political speechwriters spanning presidential administrations and campaigns from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama to demonstrate that distrust is inherent in representative politics precisely because representation works through performance.