One debater vigorously delivered one lie after one other, however the different spoke with a raspy voice and a tentative method.  (debate transcript.) So Republicans gloat and Democrats panic. It’s a crisp demonstration of the draw back of politics as theater.

Vaclav Havel, a playwright who turned a president, noticed many and important connections between theater and politics, which he defined in a 1997 essay. One passage that alludes to the potential draw back of this connection appears particularly related:

“Even doubters can’t deny one facet of theatricality in politics: the dependence of politics on media. Many politicians can be helpless with out coaches to show them the strategies of performing in entrance of the digital camera. All politicians, together with those that sneer at theater as superfluous, one thing that has no place in politics, unwittingly turn into actors, dramatists, administrators, or entertainers. 

“The numerous position that sense of theater performs in politics is two-edged. These possessing this high quality can arouse society to nice deeds and nurture democratic tradition, civic braveness, and a way of accountability. Such individuals also can mobilize the worst instincts and passions, make plenty fanatic, main them into hell. Keep in mind the big Nazi congresses, torchlight processions and inflammatory speeches by Hitler and Goebbels, the cult of German mythology. We might hardly discover a extra monstrous abuse of the theatrical facet of politics. And in the present day — even in Europe — rulers use theatrical instruments to arouse the sort of blind nationalism that results in wars, ethnic cleansings, focus camps and genocide….”

Related article: Theater and Democracy, born collectively, now each beneath assault (from 2021)