Lose the Political Informality

Modern-day politics is a Niagara of annoyances. Not the least of these, at least for me, is the inappropriate use of first names. My e-mailbox regularly is filled with notes imploring me (always addressed by my first name, “Don”) to “Join with Joe” to do this, to “Support Kamala’s” quest to do that, and to “Help Donald” achieve these other marvels. I’ve never met, or even been in a group chat, with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump, and I’m quite confident that I never will personally encounter these individuals. (My confidence on this front is enhanced by my genuine repulsion at the thought of being in the presence of any of them.) Of course, I know who they are. Or, rather, I know their public personas. But neither they nor their staffs know me.

I don’t blame Messrs. Biden and Trump and Ms. Harris, or their staffs, for not knowing me. Each of us, including even high and mighty government officials, has no knowledge of the specific existence of the vast majority of our fellow citizens. But I do blame them and their staffs for insulting my intelligence by presuming that the faux familiarity of their blast e-mails and mass mailings will cause me to suppose that, being on a first-name basis, “Donald,” “Joe,” and “Kamala” are personal friends of mine in whom I should put my trust.

Don’t think of me as being merely cantankerous. My objection to this ersatz intimacy is grounded in a substantive concern.

I know something specific about every individual with whom I’m actually on a first-name basis. Obviously, I know much more about some of these individuals – for example, my brother Ryan and my dear friend Vero – than I know about other individuals, such as Jaime, the pleasant young woman who works at the dry cleaner that I use. But about each of these individuals I do indeed know something particular. And about each of these individuals I have some concern that runs more deeply than my abstract, philosophical concern for humanity in general.

Being on a first-name basis implies personal connections beyond the merely formal or abstract. These personal connections – except with those relatively few individuals who we come to personally know but dislike – foster genuine and mutual interest, caring, and trust. These sentiments are impossible to have with strangers. These personal connections – from the closest, as with our families, to the more distant, as with neighborhood merchants – give richness, meaning, and joy to our lives. They also give ballast. We social creatures seek, because we need, personal connections not only to share pleasant times but to call us out when we err. To one degree or another, we care for and respect those individuals who we know well enough to call by their first names. To one degree or another we put our confidence in these individuals. This care, confidence, and respect are simply not available to or from strangers.

Politicians’ practice of calling each of us targeted voters by our first names, and of suggesting that we should think of each of them as people who we know on a first-name basis, is meant to trick us into thinking that they care for us in the same way as do those individuals with whom we really are on a first-name basis. This practice is a mercenary maneuver to gain our confidence on the cheap. It is literally a con game. “Kamala calls me by my first name and lets me call her by hers. I can put my confidence in her!”

We thus put trust in individuals who’ve done nothing to earn it. Some of these individuals turn out, luckily, to be decent human beings. But far too many of them are little more than con men and women. In their selfish quest for personal power, they gain our confidence under false pretenses. They trick our emotions into prompting us to suppose that they know more about us than they do, that they care more about us than they do, and that they – like our actual friends – will sacrifice their own welfare in order to further ours.

One of the great mysteries of modernity – this age of science, reason, and rationality – is the widespread, unthinking presumption that winning a democratic election turns members of our favored political party into people as trustworthy as our neighbors, siblings, and even parents. We give to elected politicians, almost none of whom any of us knows personally, the power to take our money and interfere with our personal and commercial affairs. The very same acts that, if carried out by unelected Smith, would land her in prison, instead, if carried out by elected-to-office Jones, often win him praise for being a selfless visionary helping to lead his people to the Promised Land.

If candidates for office were referred to more formally as, say, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump – and if these candidates and their campaigns similarly referred to each of us as Ms. Smith and Mr. Boudreaux – there would be conveyed the more honest realization that we don’t personally know the candidates and they don’t know us. Voters might, just might, be a bit more guarded when pondering whether or not to turn more power over to Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump than when pondering the same about Kamala or Donald. And regardless of which candidate wins the election, when in office that individual would be less likely to be mistaken as someone who should be regarded as a personal friend and confidant.

Of course, precisely because this false familiarity is a winning political tactic, it will not be abandoned. Each of us, for the rest of our lives, every election year will receive missives and mailings, addressed to us by our first names, from the many Bens, Beths, Jerrys, and Jennifers who pant for political office and who have no shame in using whatever ploys they believe will improve their prospects of laying hold of the power they so desperately crave. Such political pandering is all-too-familiar. Yet it’s a con game.