Political scopophilia, presidential campaigning, and the intimacy of American politics

This essay explores the shift of political campaigning in the United States toward a more intimate, self‐disclosive style and maintains that the psychoanalytic concept of scopophilia offers an explanation for this progression. Seen as an impulse encouraged by television, scopophilia allows for a greater understanding of political strategies designed to exhibit candidates to voters with increasing intimacy. The essay offers an analysis of three presidential campaign films from the 1984, 1988, and 1992 campaigns, and concludes with the implications of heightened levels of intimacy for the American political community. First, a politics of intimacy results in a shift away from policy concerns toward more candidate‐centered campaigns. Second, such a shift may reorder existing, masculinized conceptions of presidential leadership. Such reordering may create political and cultural disruption in a society that fears the feminization of politics. Finally, increased intimacy may foster a “scopophiliac shame” response from voters unaccustomed to possessing intimate knowledge of political leaders.