Social media ruins politics
But given Republicans’ indifference to Trump’s Twitter attacks, racism and incitement, GOP concern about Tanden’s past posts is utterly hypocritical
For the past decade, Neera Tanden has served as president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a self-described “independent nonpartisan policy institute … dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas.” Given the left-leaning character of this think tank, it is not surprising that Tanden, President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, took quite a few swipes at Republicans during her time as CEO.
Equally unsurprising is that many of those swipes occurred on Twitter, a social media platform whose structural biases favor simple, impulsive and uncivil discourse. In a now deleted tweet from 2017, for example, Tanden said of GOP support for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore: “The Republican party is gleefully supporting an alleged child molester. And everyone who gives money to the RNC is doing the same.”
Over the past several months, perhaps in anticipation of serving in the Biden administration, Tanden has deleted more than 1,000 tweets. But such
attempts to scrub social media accounts never work. So, on Tuesday, in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, she acknowledged and apologized for her previously hyper-partisan tone: “I know there have been some concerns about some of my past language on social media, and I regret that language and take responsibility for it.”
Republican members of the committee were predictably unimpressed by Tanden’s expression of regret, and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, quickly pounced. “I believe that the tone, the content and the aggressive partisanship of some of your public statements have added to the troubling trend of more incivility and division in our public life,” he said, “and in your case I’m concerned that your personal attacks about specific senators will make it more difficult for you to work with them.”
While I do not wish to diminish the partisan character of Tanden’s past social media posts, I am struck by the utter hypocrisy of Portman’s comments and those of his GOP colleagues. Where was the condemnation of partisan rhetoric on social media during the past four years when Donald Trump, the former president and leader of the Republican Party, unapologetically used Twitter to praise and promote white supremacists, spew racist attacks on Democrats, undermine faith in the fourth estate, and incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol? Where was it when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene promoted QAnon and other crazy conspiracy theories, questioned the legitimacy of school shootings, and endorsed violence against Democratic leaders?
This is the president, after all, who tweeted in 2019 that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
For four years, Republicans were, at best, silent or muted in their concerns about Trump’s toxic and divisive rhetoric on social media. In many cases, they actually endorsed it and, in doing so, they abdicated any and all moral authority to critique partisan rhetoric. But merely pointing to the shameless hypocrisy at play here does little to address the more serious underlying issue, which is that our politics today is no longer guided by principles. It is — on both sides of the aisle — guided by outrage, by stirring up anger at the opposition,
by the logic of social media.
Because we stubbornly insist on conducting our national politics on social media, we are unable to put principles ahead of politics. Of party. Of policymaking. Of personal ambition (I’m looking at you, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz). Principles have taken a back seat to likes, views, retweets. Principles have been replaced by politicized emotion.
But social media platforms were not not designed to carry our national conversations. They do no lend themselves to complex ideas, reasoned dialogue and measured discourse. These platforms are tools and, like all tools, they are well suited for some jobs and ill-suited for others. If you need to wash a window, you use a sponge, not a hammer. Using social media to do politics — to engage in civic deliberation on matters of great social import — is akin to using a hammer to wash a window.
In an exchange Wednesday at her second confirmation hearing, before the Senate Budget Committee, Chairman Bernie Sanders — himself a past Tanden target — told her attacks should be limited to policy differences. “We don’t need to make personal attacks no matter what view somebody may hold,” he said, and asked if her approach at OMB would be different. “Absolutely,” Tanden replied. “My approach would be radically different.”
Yet this a problem that goes beyond social media. We have become so addicted to these tools that we replicate their logic even when we are not using them. Twitter and other social media platforms have trained our consciousness. They invite invective and hairtrigger judgments with little or no regard for consequences. They proliferate negative emotions. They heighten hate and division. They consistently play to our worst impulses.
And, so, the question we should be asking is not whether Tanden or Trump has been more partisan on Twitter. It’s how do we get social media and its pernicious logic out of our politics.
Brian L. Ott is a professor and head of the Department of Communication at Missouri State University. He is co-author, most recently, of “Critical Media Studies: An Introduction” and “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”