Many famous political gaffes involve politicians going off-script — think of Joe Biden’s foot-in-mouth humor, or Rick Perry’s “oops” during a 2012 debate when he forgot the third federal agency he had promised to cut. In the Republican presidential debate on Saturday, by contrast, Marco Rubio blundered by adhering to a narrow script when the situation demanded improvisation. He repeated himself almost verbatim three times in four minutes, and then again less than an hour later. He did so despite Chris Christie’s withering mockery and even though his speech (“Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world”) had little direct bearing on the questions being asked. Rubio’s failed debate performance drew attention in part because it was funny. But what exactly was so funny about it?
In the hours following the debate, a variety of commentators compared Rubio’s performance to that of a machine — more specifically, a machine breaking down. Vox.com’s German Lopez described the debacle as a “short-circuit”; Steve Benon on msnbc.com called Rubio “robotic;” and the Twitter parody account @RubioGlitch leapt into existence. (These comparisons grew even more numerous after Rubio repeated himself again at a town hall event.) The mechanical quality of Rubio’s performance generated its inadvertent comedy. In the 1900 essay “On Laughter,” Henri Bergson suggested that the essence of comedy could be found in the perception of “something mechanical encrusted on the living.” Bergson identified the mechanical with a lack of flexibility. This comic inflexibility could be physical (tripping over a rock), mental (clinging to a particular habit or belief), or verbal (relying on clichés). Indeed, Bergson cited repetition of speech and gesture as a key manifestation of humorous rigidity. Rubio’s gaffe was funny because it demonstrated an absence of flexibility. Faced with sudden challenges from moderators and an opponent, he face-planted rather than pivoting to avoid them.
Bergson associated the mechanical with masquerade and mimicry, guiding principles of theater and, more generally, of representational aesthetics (e.g. illusionistic rather than abstract art). In particular, he viewed enactments of ritualized social activities as a form of role-playing. Bergson suggested that laughter arose when such social conventions were revealed as artificial performances rather than the natural order. Political campaigns consist of a series of ritualized performances: speeches, debates, nominating conventions, advertisements, social media updates. Furthermore, repetition is crucial to the success of these performances. Most people — even most voters — don’t pay much attention to politics. Thus, many of those listening to any individual iteration of a stump speech or sound bite have never heard it before, or don’t remember much about it if they have. At the same time, however, politicians strive to create the illusion of spontaneous communication rather than reiterated performance, because seeming spontaneity confers on a candidate the aura of authenticity. Rubio’s robotic repetition punctured this illusion, and in doing so underscored the constructed nature of all political performances.
Monica Achen 