{"id":370,"date":"2026-06-05T10:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=370"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:37:52","slug":"the-changing-face-of-authenticity-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"The Changing Face of \u201cAuthenticity\u201d in Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1968, Janet Malcolm visited a new showroom for high-end furniture that was, she wrote, among \u201cthe most beautiful and interesting\u201d in New York. The venue was designed by Warren Platner, an architect who himself designed furniture; Donald Trump would later acquire a set of his chairs, and sounded gratified when, during an interview in 2010, a reporter from the Times<\/em> recognized them. Platner\u2019s son, Bronson, went into law, in Maine; his<\/em> son Graham studied at Hotchkiss, a tony boarding school in Connecticut, though he hated it, skipped classes, and was quickly kicked out. Graham transferred to a different private school closer to home, where he starred in a production of \u201cMy Fair Lady.\u201d He played Henry Higgins, the haughty phonetician who teaches a lower-class flower girl to speak proper.<\/p>\n

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Last summer, Graham Platner\u2014by then an oyster farmer in Maine, following tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a spell in Washington, D.C., where he studied, and worked at a bar\u2014announced that he would be running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat. He did so in a video, set to throbbing music, that showed him driving his boat in a camo wetsuit, working out, and splitting wood in a tight-fitting T-shirt that revealed arm tattoos. Cynics (and G.O.P. operatives) might say that this mise en sc\u00e8ne defied Platner\u2019s family background, but Platner has insisted that there was nothing \u201cperformative\u201d about it. \u201cI do swing kettlebells, I lift weights, I work on the ocean with my hands, I shoot guns,\u201d he said recently. \u201cIt\u2019s just, kind of, my existence.\u201d Indeed, Platner would quickly win praise for coming across as a real person: in the weeks following his campaign launch, a local labor official likened him to \u201csomebody who I would meet in a union hall\u201d; Bernie Sanders, in an endorsement, called him \u201ca Mainer through and through.\u201d When Lisa Wood Shapiro profiled Platner, for this magazine, she asked whether he\u2019d rein in his notably foul mouth if elected. \u201cI know what rooms not to swear in,\u201d he reassured her. \u201cBut what I\u2019m not gonna do is purposely change my personality, or put on some kind of adaptation to try to appeal to folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In politics, there is a common word for this sort of thing: authenticity. As a quality, it has been invoked with particular insistence in recent months, especially with reference to Democratic candidates given the Party\u2019s second defeat to Donald Trump, its subsequent existential crisis, and generally out-of-touch aura. Pundits and politicians have called it the \u201ccoin of the realm\u201d and the subject of a \u201cconstant battle\u201d; the stuff of a \u201cgap,\u201d but also a \u201ctrap.\u201d The Democratic primary for Senate in Iowa, which took place this week, was described as an \u201cauthenticity-off.\u201d Jasmine Crockett, a since-defeated Senate candidate in Texas, claimed that Republicans were \u201cfearful\u201d of her authenticity, after Vice-President J. D. Vance quipped that \u201cher street-girl persona is about as real as her nails.\u201d When old posts surfaced in which Mallory McMorrow, who is running for Senate in Michigan, appeared to disparage Trump voters and the Midwest, she said that she had merely \u201ctweeted normal things like a normal person, and people are desperate for authenticity.\u201d Platner has repeatedly used the A-word, ascribing to himself \u201can authenticity\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. that most other politicians just can\u2019t provide because it\u2019s inauthentic for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nothing screams authenticity like insisting that you\u2019re authentic, and in many ways the discourse, of late, has revolved around just how stilted and superficial politicians tend to be. In fact, the entire concept of authenticity in politics has come to seem superficial, or at least miserably clich\u00e9d. It has been criticized for trapping women candidates, who risk seeming weak if they act \u201cfeminine\u201d and fake if they don\u2019t, and candidates of color who, as the strategist and author Maya Rupert has written, are encouraged to be their \u201creal selves\u201d but only if the results are \u201cnonthreatening, legible and familiar to the status quo.\u201d Your real self<\/em> could, of course, be that of a risk-averse political hack. Real people can also be old; indeed, there\u2019s little more authentic in life than the individual ways in which we age. And yet neither of these things really comports with what the political media means by authenticity. (Janet Mills, Maine\u2019s seventy-eight-year-old governor, who challenged Platner but suspended her campaign long before the upcoming primary, perhaps found this out to her cost.) Rather, the term has come to stand for a range of attributes\u2014intemperance, ordinariness, outsiderness, likability, spontaneity\u2014that aren\u2019t especially related philosophically, either to authenticity or to one another. Worse still, it has come to stand for the skilful performance<\/em> of such things. Whether acting or not, Platner\u2014white, macho, sweary, Midwestern-coded (if not actually Midwestern)\u2014seemed to fit the bill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Not long after Platner launched his campaign, news outlets reported on old, and somewhat less so, Reddit posts in which he expressed opinions ranging from the politically inconvenient (\u201cI got older and became a communist\u201d) to the offensive (\u201cWhy don\u2019t black people tip?\u201d). Some of the comments appeared dismissive of the prevalence of sexual assault in the armed forces, and to partially blame victims of rape who get \u201cblacked out.\u201d A few days later, Platner went on \u201cPod Save America\u201d and revealed that, when he was in the military two decades ago, he drunkenly got a skull-and-crossbones tattoo that resembled a Nazi Totenkopf insignia. (He said that he would get the tattoo removed and that he didn\u2019t previously know about its symbolism, a claim that some of his acquaintances have challenged.) Suddenly, Platner seemed a little too<\/em> authentic in the eyes of the pundit class, and conventional wisdom held him to be dead in the water, or fated to spend his career on it. But something surprising happened: Platner\u2019s campaign kept surging. \u201cNo actual voter that I\u2019ve talked to is put off by this stuff,\u201d a resident of Newcastle, Maine, told the Midcoast Villager<\/em>. \u201cEveryone is worried that some other voter will be turned off, that their neighbor will be turned off, that some swing voter next year will be, but they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people even seemed to view Platner\u2019s baggage as proof of his authenticity. If Trump long ago broke the idea of the political purity test, Platner\u2019s durability suggested that this dynamic now applied across the ideological spectrum, reflecting a bipartisan backlash against managerial, focus-grouped politics. Less cynically, in a world awash in fakery\u2014in which conspiracy theories are rampant, and A.I. is flooding our feeds and coming for our jobs\u2014many people seem more aware than ever of the value, and fragility, of the real<\/em>, however elusive that concept may be. Across decades of political discourse, the word authenticity has been tortured to the point of meaninglessness, but I\u2019ve found myself wondering, in recent months, if a new paradigm might be swimming into view. Platner\u2019s campaign, I think, has been a case in point, albeit in ways that might resonate across the electorate, beyond one Senate candidate whose flaws are becoming more visible by the day.<\/p>\n

What it means to be authentic has always been slippery\u2014according to Merriam-Webster, definitions can include \u201cnot false or imitation\u201d but also \u201cconforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.\u201d (When I Googled \u201cPlatner authenticity,\u201d the first result was a Reddit post asking how one might detect a fake Warren Platner dining table.) The modern notion of \u201cauthenticity\u201d grew out of the Enlightenment era. Prior to that, in medieval Europe, societies were highly localized and hierarchical, and their denizens were not encouraged to think reflectively about their \u201creal selves,\u201d or how they related, as individuals, to the world around them. Then came modernity, or, as the academic Charles Lindholm has put it, \u201cthe condition of living among strangers.\u201d This required trust, which in turn required sincerity, which in turn raised all sorts of questions\u2014What does it mean to be sincere? What internal truths should guide us? And how do we access those, anyway?\u2014that philosophers are still sorting through today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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America\u2019s electoral politics themselves grew out of Enlightenment ideals. And yet, the tropes that would come to read as authentic in this sphere are, arguably, a quite recent invention. Historians have located their echoes in William Henry Harrison\u2019s log cabin, Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s thrusting campaign style (one opponent, Woodrow Wilson, lamented that he was perceived as a \u201cvague, conjectural personality\u201d compared with T.R.\u2019s \u201creal, vivid person\u201d), and Richard Nixon\u2019s speech about his family\u2019s cocker spaniel, Checkers. More than one scholar, however, has dated the modern thirst for authenticity to the Watergate era, during which voters began to demand more of an insight into the character of their leaders, and the burgeoning medium of television was able to serve it to them. The first candidate whom today\u2019s Beltway media might have recognized as authentic was Jimmy Carter, who portrayed himself as a humble outsider with down-home Southern bona fides. The pollster Erica J. Seifert writes, in her book \u201cThe Politics of Authenticity in Presidential Campaigns, 1976\u20132008,\u201d that, before Carter, candidates who emphasized their humble roots largely did so to demonstrate their \u201cextraordinariness of character\u201d and \u201cAmerican heroism\u201d in escaping them. After Carter, those who best presented themselves as normal, straightforward people who had led legibly American lives far from D.C. tended to win\u2014even if they were the incumbent.<\/p>\n

This sort of behavior was a contrivance from the start, but, as time passed, it seemed to have ever less to do with who politicians really were<\/em>, and ever more to do with the pathologies of professional, consultant-driven campaigns\u2014a key currency of a culture that placed the political horse race above all else, made celebrities of backstage image-makers, and eventually led voters themselves to second-guess which candidates their peers would perceive as more \u201celectable.\u201d (The latter trend is very much still with us; consider the voter from Newcastle, Maine.) Trump\u2019s victory in 2016 was, in some ways, the logical endpoint of the authenticity cult. He clearly appealed to many voters as an inimitable and assured outsider who invariably spoke his mind. At the same time, though, he destroyed the idea by exposing its hollowness: he lied constantly, and was, in no way, a normal person. Trump came from the highly artificial world of reality TV, in which people\u2019s real selves blur into the archetypes they play; it was possible to view Trump, the emerging politician, as a performed character, but one that became real, so intense was the actor\u2019s belief in the bit. In 2020, Dan P. McAdams, a narrative psychologist, described Trump as lacking the inner story that gives most lives meaning. McAdams saw him, rather, as an \u201cepisodic man,\u201d who approached life as one battle after another. (Lately, this may have changed: Trump still loves a battle, but he seems to care a bit more about his longer-term legacy, and acting on his convictions no matter what his base thinks.)<\/p>\n

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By shattering the tired conventional wisdom about authenticity in politics, Trump may have created the space for others to inject fresh energy and meaning into the idea\u2014though, in politics, nothing is truly new. The conception of authenticity that Trump broke may be traceable to Carter\u2019s post-Watergate win, but a richer version of authenticity was one of the key concerns of an earlier \u201cnew left,\u201d which emerged in the decades following the Second World War, and which pursued the \u201creal\u201d as a salve for feelings of alienation within a consumerist, bureaucratic society. Six years before Carter took the White House, the Marxist philosopher Marshall Berman declared that the search for authenticity is almost inextricably \u201cbound up with a radical rejection of things as they are.\u201d This line of thinking seems hard to relate to the question of which politician you\u2019d most like to grab a beer with. But the political climate that gave rise to Carter was certainly born of a backlash against a corrupt status quo, even if its codes of authenticity would themselves become corrupted.<\/p>\n

This present moment of rejectionism, alienation, and disgust at rampant graft might provide fertile soil for a rebirth of what it means for a politician to be authentic. Such a dynamic came into view, last year, in the New York mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani, a candidate who was frequently credited with authenticity, despite not fitting the typical mold. In no small part, this came down to his apparently effortless manner of communicating online. This was a misimpression\u2014he actually worked very hard on his output, and the broader way he presented himself in public was highly disciplined and on message. (Much of what passed for his authenticity, I think, was charisma.) And yet, it wasn\u2019t wrong to view his campaign, or even its online presence, as authentic, at least in the sense that\u2014while rivals targeted him with A.I. slop\u2014he used social media to show himself moving through the physical world, be it plunging into the icy waters of Coney Island or walking the length of Manhattan. \u201cI think social media is often discussed as a way in which you can escape the world,\u201d he told Wired<\/em>. \u201cWhat\u2019s been exciting is to be part of a team that\u2019s looking to use it as a way to tell the stories of that world and then to transform it.\u201d In the same interview, he bemoaned the fact that \u201ctoo much of politics has become artificial, has become the creation of a self that is actually divorced from the way in which you grew up in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For months, Platner\u2019s candidacy stood for something similar. After his offensive Reddit posts came to light, he described himself as a \u201cretired shitposter.\u201d He also released an earnest, unproduced video in which he explained that his time in the military left him feeling \u201cvery disillusioned, very alienated, and very isolated,\u201d and that he had tried and failed to find a sense of belonging on the internet before finding \u201cactual community\u201d back home, in Maine. \u201cI am very proud of the person I am today,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAnd it was that whole journey that got me here.\u201d Since then, he has repeatedly made the case that people are capable not only of change but of fighting, side by side, to live as their truest selves. He has, notably, refused to feed trans people into the maw of the culture war, bemoaning the fact that outside money was able to inject transphobia into a local school-board race, and insisting that \u201ca politics that is willing to sell anyone out will eventually sell everyone out.\u201d Platner is<\/em> angry at the system\u2014or, in other words, things as they are. But the way he has expressed himself has often been softer-edged than his caricature would suggest. \u201cMost of my hobbies are things that people tend to associate with, like, manly stuff,\u201d he told NPR recently. \u201cAt the exact same time, I go to therapy. I have a very open sort of dialogue and emotional relationship with my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since that interview, however, Platner has faced bad headlines again, and they have had to do with his relationships. Last week, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> and the Times<\/em> both reported that his wife, Amy Gertner, discovered explicit messages that he exchanged with other women after they got married, in 2023, and informed campaign aides about the potential embarrassment that the messages posed. (In response to the stories, Gertner released a video of herself walking down a street and flicking away bugs. \u201cNo marriage is perfect, and I don\u2019t want a perfect marriage,\u201d she said, insisting that she and Platner have been working through their problems.) Then, on Thursday, the Times<\/em> ran with the stories of three women who dated Platner\u2014at least as long ago as 2013, and as recently as 2021\u2014and described his behavior, variously, as contemptuous of women, unfaithful, and generally \u201cunsettling.\u201d One, Lyndsey Fifield, alleged that, while Platner never hit her, he did sometimes grab her roughly, on one occasion twisting her arm behind her back before shutting her in a bedroom.<\/p>\n

Platner\u2019s campaign strongly denied any physical violence, and pointed out that Fifield is \u201ca lifelong G.O.P. operative.\u201d Fifield insisted that her politics had nothing to do with her decision to speak out, and shared a diary entry, from 2016, in which she described Platner as \u201cthe most toxic literally abusive man on earth who destroyed my life.\u201d Platner did acknowledge that he \u201ctoo often self medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend\u201d during a \u201cvery dark period of my life.\u201d His campaign put the Times<\/em> in touch with three other women, who, broadly, called him a great guy. Even the three who had very different experiences said that he could be exhilarating company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Times<\/em> story used the word \u201ccomplicated\u201d four times. One of those usages was actually in the negative: a reference to Platner telling CNN, back in January, that he had not<\/em> lived a complicated life, and that, beyond the Reddit posts and his tattoo, no more skeletons would emerge from his closet. This, obviously, was not true. More may yet emerge. Already, the story of his marital infidelity had spooked some Democratic lawmakers and strategists, though others dismissed it, including by praising him and his wife for showing up \u201cevery day on the campaign trail as their authentic selves.\u201d Many voters seemed not to care.<\/p>\n

There are, clearly, unresolved questions as to what Platner\u2019s real self looks like: the accounts of some of his former girlfriends cast doubt on the softer edges of his persona, but, given the period in question, they aren\u2019t necessarily incompatible with his claims of personal growth; the sexts, apparently consensual, are less serious, but more recent. Henry Higgins, the character Platner once played in \u201cMy Fair Lady,\u201d at his private school, was based on Pygmalion, the sculptor of Greek myth who, dissatisfied by the imperfections of nature, crafted a statue, then fell in love with it. Platner\u2019s critics might see a metaphor there, but Platner has, in many ways, set up his campaign in opposition to the politics of carefully chiselled perfectionism. He\u2019s about to find out the extent to which voters are willing to go along.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

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What Graham Platner\u2019s scandal-plagued Senate run says about a tired clich\u00e9. 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