In the last few months, the discourse around the need for Democrats to be authentic has ramped up.
Just a few examples: The Bulwark called it “the authenticity trap.” The Atlantic noted that “what creates the “relatable dude-bro” audience is organic connection, not donor checks.” A NYT columnist wrote that Democrats have forgotten what he calls “the achingly simple lesson” of authenticity, and simply being a normal person.
Third Way, a centrist think tank, put out a memo imploring people to be authentic — but also, hypocritically and ironically, telling them exactly which words to use or not use.
Hell, I’ve also written about it before, and tbh, have been saying it for nearly the entire 8 years of Run for Something.
We’re all correct (except Third Way’s memo, which was silly, but that’s neither here nor there).
But if I was a Democrat running for office (or any leader right now), I’d be losing my mind, because “be authentic” is both correct advice and totally infuriating to put into practice.
Because let’s be honest: How the fuck do you be authentic? How do you be yourself, but also, be a version of yourself that wins votes, and represents people, and gives voice to other perspectives, and keeps your politics in check, and also still has boundaries, because actually even if you’re being yourself you don’t really want to be your full self, since your full self is not always appropriate for the spaces you’re in, and maybe is captivating enough to break through in this attention ecosystem?
You can see where I’m going here: This is really easy to say — just be yourself!! — and yet, so many politicians struggle. Why?
I have a few thoughts. Before I get into them, let’s zoom out.
What is authenticity?
I wrestled with this for most of 2024, and in the first 40-ish pages of When We’re in Charge, I try to answer this question — it’s the part of the book I wrote and rewrote (and then rewrote again) the most.
Authenticity is the buzzword in modern life. It’s what people say they want out of celebrities, influencers, brands, politicians, and most relevant for this conversation, leaders.
Leaders themselves say they want to embody it: In a study on executive presence— the ways bosses and leaders carry themselves in order to convey gravitas and power—37% of executives self-identified “authenticity” as a core communication skill.
So what is authenticity? It’s annoying to say this, but much like the Supreme Court said about porn, most of us know it when we see it.
One option for a definition for authenticity comes from OG shame and vulnerability researcher Dr. Brené Brown, who defines the term as “the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
I mostly like that definition—both because I’m a cliché white woman in my thirties who likes Brené Brown and, more important, because I think the definition of authenticity as a practice—as an active verb—is useful. Leaders today have no choice but to let go of who we should be because so many of the models we’ve got for what leadership should be no longer work for us.
Another possible definition came from millennial writer Ann Friedman, who along with writing books and having run newsrooms over the years, runs her own newsletter, The Ann Friedman Weekly. She described authenticity to me using a metaphor:
If you’re lost in the mall, you don’t run to every store looking for your mom. They tell you to stay in one place and your mom will find you. If you’re running everywhere, trying to make something for potentially everyone, you may find no one. If you’re in one place, being like I’m here, I’m doing me right here, people will find you.
If all that feels hard to pin down, consider defining authenticity by its opposite, inauthenticity. Even if we can’t put our fingers on it, we can almost always tell when someone is bullshitting us.
Why does authenticity matter?
This is the more important question for politicians (and leaders of any context, which is why it’s a huge topic of my book): Why does authenticity matter?
My hot take here: Most people don’t actually want leaders to be themselves, because it’s not really about the leader. It’s about the people being led.
And what the people being led want is two specific feelings:
Trust. People want to know that expectations and reality are aligned—they want to be able to be both confident in and comforted by structure and to know that when they are told something, they can believe it.
Psychological safety. People want to feel like they can be themselves (or a version of themselves) without risk of physical or emotional harm.
This is, in many ways, politics 101. It’s not really about whether voters like the politician; it’s about whether voters think the politician likes them. Authenticity is what enables trust.
(FWIW, this is what all the “Democrats are scolds” type discourse is getting at: Some voters have the sense that Democrats don’t like them — even if most of the “Democrats” inspiring that feeling are actually “randos on the internet” or “activists with specific communications goals,” and even as Republican electeds and candidates love to literally demonize Democrats. Not great.)
Anyway! We want to be able to trust that politicians say what they mean and mean what they say, and feel like we’re connected with them. Authenticity enables that.
Why is it so hard for candidates to be authentic?
The advice is so common but clearly so hard to follow — why is that the case?
I have a few answers here based on my experience with political candidates as well as the extensive research and interviews I did for the book, many of which covered the challenges and necessity of “being yourself” in a position of power.
Obviously, none of these apply to every candidate or elected, and I’m not saying these are good excuses for inauthenticity. But to solve the problem, we have to understand what’s holding folks back. So what follows is a few disjointed theories, thoughts, and feelings on the whole debacle…
(1) The politician doesn’t not know who they are or what they truly believe.
I think this is the case for a lot of politicians who struggle to show up in a way that reads as authentic — they just don’t have a good sense of self. Whether that’s because they haven’t given it enough thought, don’t do enough therapy, or are still wrestling in real time with their values, I don’t know. Maybe all of the above?
I think a lot about how Ilana Glazer told me in an interview that “being the authentic leader is holding your shape [while serving as] that leader” — if you don’t know what your shape is, you have nothing to maintain when dropped into different contexts.
A candidate that knows who they are and why they’re running will have a much easier time running a campaign: The team needs only to decide the tactics used to communicate that story. The campaigns that struggle are ones who waste time debating what the campaign believes in the first place.
I think this is the larger problem for the Democratic Party, especially in the in-between time when we don’t have a presidential nominee — we don’t really know who we are or what shape we want to hold. The GOP, on the other hand, is simply Trump all the way down. Whatever he says, goes. (It’s why I maintain: Once he’s gone, one way or another, their wobbly coalition collapses. JD Vance or any of the other dingleberries who will try and take on the mantle can’t hold it together.)
Without a strong sense of self, authentic communication is fundamentally impossible.
(2) There is inherent tension between “just be yourself” and “be a leader.”
This came up a ton in my book interviews with millennial and gen Z leaders: We been told our entire lives to “just be yourself!” We are told the secret sauce to success is to be vulnerable and honest; that the celebrities, influencers, and politicians who are described as “real” are the ones we should aspire to be like, often positioned in contrast to the public figures who seemed like they were created in a lab by industry puppet masters.
Then we’re put into positions of power and quickly learn: We absolutely cannot be ourselves, at least not the way we’ve been taught or seen modeled for us online or in pop culture, and not in any way we’ve seen leaders in the past model for us.
That because the job of a leader is not actually to be yourself; it’s to be the best version of yourself in service of the people you’re leading and your goals. E.G.: You don’t manage the way you want to be managed; you manage the way your direct report needs to be managed.
Sometimes that means shutting up, or saying things differently than you might if you were totally #unfiltered, or dumbing down your language.
Is it inauthentic to be thoughtful, or to be strategic with your communications? Is self-regulation inauthentic? No! But also, sometimes! Depends who’s doing the communicating and how. But you can see how this gets hard quickly.
(3) Relatedly: Politicians and candidates are drowning in advice.
The Democratic Party spends conservatively hundreds of millions of dollars (probably more) on message research, polling, and testing to identify the “best” messages. (I think a lot of that money is wasted, because message exists in relationship to messenger, but again, that’s a topic for another time.)
Even for the leaders who truly know themselves and who don’t seek it out, that flood of data can mess with your head. It can make you second-guess yourself. It can make you question whether your gut is right. The stakes are too high to get it wrong — what if your authentic reaction will serve you poorly?
Layered on top of that: The job of an elected or candidate is, ideally, to listen to lots of people, take in their perspectives, and act accordingly. They are balancing many many different stakeholders: Their own goals, their voters/constituents, their supporters, their political partners, their colleagues, the media, and others — and while each of those carry a different weight (and I think some politicians incorrectly over-index on one group of people over another), that’s a lot of push and pull.
People blame inauthenticity on consultants or polling or donors, but also, don’t we want our candidates and electeds to be strategic and at least informed by data, if not defined by it, and don’t we want them to be able to raise the money necessary to compete? Again — not an excuse, just an explanation.
(4) Inauthenticity is a defense mechanism for when you get yelled at.
Just by definition, getting yelled at (or the internet equivalent of it) is part of the job. After all, even the most popular politician with a 70% approval rating still has 30% of the people disliking them, and those 30% are often extremely loud online. I suspect that for some politicians, some amount of performance of self creates some distance between them and the criticism.
The criticism is inevitable; if they’re mad at a performance of you, then they’re not really mad at you.
I understand that impulse for self-defense.
But I say this to myself and to every leader I work with: When you start twisting yourself around or saying nothing in order to totally evade criticism, you’re doing yourself a disservice. A leader can’t be afraid of blowback. You can only operate with integrity and in line with your values, so that when the critics come (and they will) you know you’re standing on business.
(5) “The Attention-Authenticity Paradox”
My friend Jesse Lehrich has a great new newsletter called Nobody’s Listening, where he’s tracking the 2028 shadow primary (I know, sigh, but someone’s gotta do it.) In yesterday’s edition, he asked an excellent question:
”How do you navigate a moment that simultaneously demands politicians take extraordinary measures to capture attention and punishes those who seem contrived?”
Jesse explains: “2028 hopefuls will need to find creative ways to inject themselves into the plot, whether it’s by doing unique media and events, or by manufacturing purposeful conflict (bucking the party, picking fights with corporate villains, etc.) But again, doing this for 3 years without the act getting too act-y is a herculean task.”
For some of these leaders, seeking attention may come from an authentic impulse. Or alternatively, authentic communication might garner attention! (Like my toddler throwing a temper tantrum…) Either way: It’s a tricky line to walk.
(6) Maybe our definition of authenticity is flawed…
This is less a theory and more something I’ve noticed: so many of the candidates people online would point to as authentic leaders have what writer Kyle Tharp describes as “a communication style that feels at home in the manosphere media ecosystem, a space where blunt, tell-it-like-it-is politics has proven effective at reaching young and disaffected male voters.”
I am similarly marinading on the lack of comparable media/communication spaces are for women to “hang out” and “be themselves” in the same way the bro podcasts make possible, and why that’s the case. I don’t a solution here, but it’s worth naming to be aware of.
Personally, I think MI Sen. Mallory McMorrow, Rep. AOC, candidate Kat Abughazaleh, NE Sen. Megan Hunt, FL Rep. Anna Eskamani, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and countless other RFS candidates/alum in particular all show up as themselves, fully embodied.
But it does raise my eyebrows a bit at who gets lifted up as authentic, where they perform that authenticity, and who gets ignored by the ~discourse~ or written off as calculating.
(7) They are being authentic — and who they authentically are sucks, and/or is really boring.
Consider the case of Andrew Cuomo. That dude is absolutely being himself. But who he is really sucks: He is authentically a piece of shit narcissist.
The same is true of Trump! He is authentically a racist asshole with pudding for brains. Yes, he lies. But authenticity is not the same thing as always telling the truth; authenticity is being who you really are, and he really is a corrupt liar.
Authentic does not always = honest, likeable, or persuasive. Authentic = enabling connection and trust. There’s a difference.
(8) The rules of performance of self have changed, and the older candidates haven’t caught up.
I know, I know, this is my generational divide thing again. But consider that millennials have been carefully curating how we are perceived online since we were in middle school or earlier. (Remember how carefully we’d pick out song lyrics for AIM away messages???)
I don’t think this is necessarily a good thing for our mental health or well-being, but it’s simply a fact: We’ve been thinking about how we perform ourselves and the distinction (or lack thereof) between “online us” and “real us” through our entire adolescences and into adulthood.
For many politicians who came of age before the internet, they may not have the fluency with modern comms tactics necessary to do it in a way that feels natural.
Not all of the younger leaders are good at this, obviously, and some of the older leaders are great at it. But to paraphrase the Dark Knight: They adopted the dark — we were born in it.
There are no easy answers.
It’s so easy to tell candidates “just be yourself” and so so hard to tell them how to actually do that in a repeatable and operationalized way.
But alas: In order to win elections, especially the big ones, we’re going to need to figure it out, because as I’ve written before: People vote for people. And in order to get to know people, the leaders need to sell themselves as people.
Curious what you think I’m missing here — let me know in the comments.
Some other stuff I’ve written about the Democratic Party:
Book recs:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab - A feminist/vampire/gothic/angry/queer love story alternating across multiple timelines. Hard to explain, really well done, and once I got into it, I was so excited to put the kids to bed and read for an hour every night. Definitely recommend this, even if you’re not really into horror or gothic literature.
Far and Away by Amy Poeppel - Strangers Lucy in Dallas and Greta in Berlin do a last-minute home swap for the summer after hijinks ensue and Lucy’s gotta get out of town to help her kids cope after a scandal and Greta’s gotta be in Dallas for her husband’s job change. Their families deal with being thrown into new environments and chaos. This is an easy beach read for the last informal weekend of summer.
Other recs:
Yes, but really: Convince me why we need universal childcare. [Rebecca Gale]
We didn’t take any vacations this summer or do any travel with the kids because tbh, the idea of paying $$$ to parent a baby and a toddler without any of our stuff and no childcare sounded just wildly not worth it — our thesis/cope is that until it’s not stressful/financially sound, our kids can get just as much from a subway ride to a new playground as they can from a plane ride to a new city. Proud to be resisting this particular strain of millennial parent anxiety. [The Atlantic]
I’d never watched his show before, but I was deeply compelled by Adam Friedland’s interview with Rep. Richie Torres — speaking of authentic communication, the way Adam is in genuine pain (that I relate to) as he talked about his complicated feelings as a Jew about what Israel is doing in our names, and the way Torres is a completely unempathetic robotic ghoul in response — phew. Worth watching. [The Adam Friedland Show]’
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Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.
Love this one Amanda. I’ve never run for office and honestly can’t even imagine the stress of trying to be authentic and balance all of the demands of a campaign.
But even just the act of publishing publicly in various forms has shown me that showing up “authentically” is a heck of a lot harder than it seems.
I like Brene’s take on authenticity being a verb. Certainly feels that way.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think it’s all wound up around this:
“Most people don’t actually want leaders to be themselves, because it’s not really about the leader. It’s about the people being led.”
Do you HEAR the people you want to lead? Do they FEEL heard? Have you LISTENED? Can they tell you’ve listened?
So much political comms seems to be telling people what the what is, or the pol talking about themselves. The more you center regular people (halalflation- if you’re a NYer, that is relatable as hell, even if you don’t care about Halal food.
You feel SEEN and HEARD) the more trust you build, the more someone can say “I may not like this or that about you, but I know, in the end, you’re in my corner”.
Of course, all those other excellent points you made play into this too- I just think this is the biggest nugget.