Political scientist Eitan Hersh explains how “political hobbyism” is ruining politics on The Ezra Klein Show
Obsessively following the daily political news feels like an act of politics, or at least an act of civics. But what if, for many of us, it’s a replacement for politics — and one that’s actually hurting the country?
That is the argument made by Tufts University political scientist Eitan Hersh in this episode of The Ezra Klein Show. In his incisive new book Politics Is for Power, Hersh draws a sharp distinction between what he calls “political hobbyism” — following politics as a kind of entertainment and expression of self-identity — and the actual work of politics. His data show that a lot of people who believe they are doing politics are passively following it, and the way they’re following it has played a key role in making the political system worse.
But this isn’t just a critique. Hersh’s argument builds to an alternative way of engaging in politics: as a form of service to our institutions and communities. And that alternative approach leads to some dramatically different ideas about how to marry an interest in politics with a commitment to building a better world. It also speaks to some of what we lost in rejecting the political machines and transactional politics of yesteryear — a personal obsession of mine and a more important hinge point in American political history than I think we realize.
We are, as you may have noticed, deep into election season, and that’s when it’s easiest to mistake the drama of national politics for the doing of actual politics. So there’s no better time for this conversation.
Here’s a lightly edited transcript of part of our conversation, which we released this week on The Ezra Klein Show.
Ezra Klein
It seems to me that you are quietly making a distinction between what we might call politics as a verb and politics as a noun — between being interested in the subject of politics and doing politics. So what is “political hobbyism”?
Eitan Hersh
Political hobbyism is a catchall for all the ways we do politics to serve our own emotional or intellectual needs or wants rather than do a kind of power-seeking organized behavior. It’s arguing about the news, sharing the news, reacting to news, being an at-home pundit about the news. All of those things that involve giving politics your headspace and emotion but not doing the real work of it.
Ezra Klein
Depending on how you cut it, it seems like this definition could implicate me quite deeply. You could categorize a lot of the work I do as functionally crack for political hobbyists and categorize many people listening to the podcast right now as political hobbyists.
But, in my head, the work I do is give people good information and analysis on politics that helps motivate their action. And I think a lot of people imagine that’s what they’re doing when they inform themselves about politics: That information leads to people being able to take good, clear action. How do you make a cut between those two things when a lot of people see the former is being necessary for the latter?
Eitan Hersh
For most people who are political junkies, their news consumption is not really geared toward information that is going to help them be active citizens in the community. And even if it is, they’re not being active in the community. Most people who are daily news consumers belong to zero organizations and have worked zero times in the past year with other people on a community problem. So, most people are not doing anything.
Ezra Klein
You have actual survey data in the book on the amount of time people spend on politics and the amount of time they spend on political hobbyism. Could you substantiate this little bit for me?
Eitan Hersh
If you look at the number of people who are spending time on politics, there’s about a third of the country that says they’re spending about two hours a day in news consumption. That might sound crazy at first, but if you add up all the time on podcasts or radio and reading the news and worrying about it and talking about it at the family dinner table, two hours actually doesn’t seem that unreasonable for a whole lot of people.
Ezra Klein
How does the two hours break down and how does it differ among groups?
Eitan Hersh
Almost none of it, let’s say 2 percent, is real community or volunteer engagement. The rest is mostly news consumption and sharing, talking, and debating online. The group that spends the most time in any kind of political engagement is white men, particularly college-educated white men. They know the most facts about politics, but they are not the group that is engaging most in real politics — organized politics with goals and strategies. You have women overwhelmingly in those roles. You also have racial minorities, particularly blacks, but also to some extent Latinos who spend less overall time on politics like following the news but more of their time is spent in these concrete ways.
Ezra Klein
You say that there are three primary reasons a political lobbyism is bad. It makes our politicians worse, it makes us worse, and it takes away time that could be spending building power. Let’s take those one by one. How does it make our politicians worse?
Eitan Hersh
A lot of what’s happening in small-dollar donations, for example, is the second a politician on the debate says stage says something like really provocative you feel connected to them and you give them a $5 donation. Or you’re watching a congressional hearing and a politician grandstands and makes some speech. And because they grandstand in a way that you liked, you react by giving a $5 donation. So, what’s really going on is you have no goals except to reward a politician for saying something that feels great in the moment. I think that makes politics worse rather than better. And you are doing it more for yourself — for your own kind of emotional cathartic ends — rather than to move politics in a direction that’s good.
Ezra Klein
How does political hobbyism make us worse?
Eitan Hersh
There are a lot of power relationships we have outside of politics [boss, coworker, parent] where we are trying to get other people to take some action that they wouldn’t otherwise take that we want them to take. And we kind of know the basic parameters for how to behave in those situations: We have to understand where people are coming from and understand their needs. We have to be empathetic to them. Because that’s how you can bring other people along with you.
That does not describe the way that people do politics online. If the whole point of it is kind of for fun or catharsis, then anger and outrage and not taking people’s opinions seriously will be normal. Actual politics requires a sense of empathy and understanding other people’s interests; Otherwise, you can’t get anything done. So, in that sense, we’re just practicing the wrong skill set.
You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Author: Ezra Klein
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