“The Soul of Shame” – Republicans and the CNBC Debate

There is one reason that political debates are so intriguing. And let’s not fool ourselves about this. We are not intrigued by these debates because we get to learn about the different positions candidates take on issues. That would be boring. And besides, at this stage of the primary debates, all the candidates have similar positions on the issues.

No. The real reason we are so fascinated by these debates is the drama. We want to see who wins and who loses. Debates are like a sporting event. Candidates, moderators, television networks – they are all playing the game to win.

And in this zero-sum game, in order to win somebody has to lose. Somebody has to be shamed. The game is rigged. They aren’t fair. They are set up to ensure that somebody gets humiliated.

But many Republican candidates are complaining that CNBC’s debate last week was unfair because the moderators asked “Gotcha” questions and acted in “bad faith.” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote that the moderators’ questions were “petty and mean spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates.”

I want to be clear that I’m not criticizing Priebus or the Republican candidates who are complaining that the debate wasn’t fair. Essentially, they are right – the debate wasn’t fair because none of the debates are fair. They aren’t supposed to be fair; they are supposed to entertain us through the mechanism of shame. Until the American people demand changes, we shouldn’t expect anything different.

According to Curt Thompson’s latest book, The Soul of Shame, shame is the feeling that, “I am not enough; There is something wrong with me; I am bad, or I don’t matter.” But as Thompson states, shame is more than a feeling. It’s relational. Shame exists inside our minds, but it also exists between us. It is one of the many ways we influence one another. “In other words,” as Thompson explains, “there is rarely anything I do that is not either influencing or being influenced by other minds. And shame has no trouble swimming in the current that is constantly flowing between us.”

How we manage the current of shame that flows between us is crucial for finding healthy ways to heal our sense of shame.  Typically, we manage our sense of shame in unhealthy ways by mimicking others who have embarrassed us. Unfortunately, countering shame by shaming others is the natural default position of being human. It’s what the anthropologist René Girard calls this imitative type of behavior mimetic. You can see it everywhere, Reince Priebus and the Republicans who felt shamed. How did they respond? By shaming the CNBC moderators. But Priebus and those Republicans are not much different than any of us. We all tend to swim quite comfortably in the current of shame that constantly flows between us.

But we can swim in other currents. Instead of responding to shame with more shame, we can expose the cycle of shame by naming the game that we’re playing. Thompson alludes to this by writing, “. . . exposure is the very thing that shame requires for healing. Given how compelled we feel to turn away, strike inward at ourselves or strike out at others in response to shame, it is not our intuition to then quickly turn toward the other as a means to resolve the problem.”

I think this is what New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Christ Christie did in a recent interview.* Christie named the game recently by asking the rhetorical question, “Are we shocked” that moderators are biased? Of course we shouldn’t be shocked. It doesn’t matter if the moderator is from Fox News, CNBC, Telemundo, or PBS – to be human is to be biased. There’s no such thing as fair and balanced. We’re all politically biased. Even claiming to be anti-political is a political bias.

Christie also stated in the interview that “Debates are about seeing how someone responds under pressure, seeing whether you can think on your feet. Because, by the way, the presidency is going to make you think on your feet. And if you can’t do that and we gotta keep looking for the talking points, that’s going to be a problem.”

Now, I’m fully aware that Chris Christie has a checkered political past. There is evidence that he has bullied and shamed people during his political career. He’s as tough as any political candidate and can be rude. But I think he’s pointing to something in his interview that’s important. And that’s this: because political debates are full of shame, they are a microcosm of life, where we swim in the current of shame. Indeed, “Debates are about seeing how someone responds under pressure.” That pressure is the current of shame that flows between us. And if we continue to swim in the current by shaming one another, then we will doom ourselves to a more hostile and violent world.

Responding to the pressure of being shamed by shaming others is easy. Thinking on our feet requires an alternative and more intentional response. Whether in a political debate or in a business room or at the kitchen table, we would benefit from swimming in a different current. That different current requires naming the shame game, exposing how it functions in our lives, and refusing to participate in the game.

Then we can swim in a different current that foster a more compassionate and peaceful world.

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