The Being-There Phenomenon
Here we are in the homestretch of another election season, so I thought it was a good time to once again watch Being There, starring Peter Sellers. When I first watched this movie, I thought it was a brilliant satire filled with hilarious dialogue. Today, however, I’m inclined to believe it’s a real-life training film for aspiring young politicians.
In the movie, Sellers plays Chance, an illiterate gardener whose life experience consists largely of taking care of plants and watching television. When a bizarre set of circumstances propels him into wealthy Washington society, his introduction is misunderstood, and Chance the gardener becomes “Chauncey Gardiner.” Powerful people misinterpret his observations about gardening to be profound insights into economics and public affairs, which ultimately leads to Washington insiders discussing him as a possible presidential candidate.
Chance himself never claims to be brilliant. In fact, due to his illiteracy, he rarely says anything at all. It is the supposedly sophisticated people surrounding him who tout him as a genius. In effect, he provides the empty vessel into which they pour their own expectations.
Washington has managed to industrialize this process with the stunning rise of dolts like AOC and Kamala Harris, real-life Chauncey Gardiners whose supporters project wisdom into thoughts they deliver at a third-grade level. A misleading economic assertion becomes compassion. A wandering answer becomes nuance. A cliché becomes a brilliant vision.
AOC has mastered the political skill of delivering TikTok insights with such conviction that checking her words seems almost like bad manners. The eyebrows rise, the indignation arrives, and somewhere in the distance a fact quietly requests asylum. The audience hears moral certainty and applies intellectual authority to it. AOC sounds concerned (“The world is gonna end in twelve years!”), which is taken to mean that her observations must be correct.
It’s unfortunate that AOC, contrary to what the fake-news media keeps telling us, has no chance whatsoever of being the Democrat nominee in 2028, because watching her campaign would provide side-splitting entertainment. I just hope Democrat powerholders allow her to be on the debate stage at least once, because her performance would make Peter Sellers’ character in Being There seem like an intellectual giant by comparison.
Then there’s Kamala. Whereas AOC favors the thunderbolt, Kamala favors the verbal scenic route. A thought enters her mind and words start pouring out of her mouth. The words encounter several detours and eventually emerge as a totally different thought. Then, with the passage of time, the cringey cackle arrives on schedule.
I usually agree with Clay Travis, but he’s wrong when he says Kamala will be the Democrat nominee in 2028. The only question is whether or not Democrats are delusional enough to allow her to reach the debate stage, in which case it would be an embarrassing one-and-done for her just like in 2020.
It’s remarkable how readily political admirers treat common formulations, solemn delivery, and reassuring cadence as substitutes for an illuminating answer. The predictable applause arrives on cue when the meandering sentence finally reaches a dead end.
Chauncey Gardiner had the advantage of innocence, but modern politicians rely on consultants. Imagine a contemporary campaign discovering Chauncey. Within forty-eight hours, his gardening observations would become policy framework. Within seventy-two hours, an NGO would sponsor a symposium on his transformative understanding of seasonal resilience.
Ask how he would reduce the deficit, and he might respond by saying that plants need water. The moderator would thank him for connecting fiscal responsibility with environmental justice, and the audience would applaud. Sheer genius!
Republicans, of course, have their share of Chauncey Gardiners, but Democrats have a much deeper bench with such stalwarts as Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, Liz Warren, et al, to name but a few who are incapable of giving an intelligible answer to a straightforward question. Of course, my favorite real-life Chauncey is still Barack Obama, whom the clapping seals continue to laud as a great orator every time he stutters and stumbles his way through another vacuous speech.
The Peter Principle says that people rise to their own level of incompetence, but politicians do not rise to prominence on their own. Parties, donors, commentators, and devoted voters have investments to protect, so once they announce that someone is brilliant, admitting otherwise becomes expensive. Consequently, a bad answer becomes something merely taken out of context, insufficiently appreciated, or sabotaged by an unfair question—meaning a question that requires (gasp) a real answer.
All this explains why credentials should never function as a lifetime exemption from scrutiny. A diploma demonstrates that someone completed a course of study, nothing more. Being an elected official means only that a person figured out how to get votes. All well and good, but the reality is that neither credentials nor position guarantees good judgment, intellectual honesty, or competence at managing anything larger than a taco stand.
The Chauncey Gardiner syndrome of confusing status with ability travels across borders and ideologies. Authoritarians reward flattery; party machines reward loyalty; bureaucracies reward surviving the bureaucracy. Regardless of the country, low-IQ people magically evolve into geniuses if the powerholders perceive them to be useful.
What makes the Being-There phenomenon so puzzling is not that unqualified people stumble into positions of power, but that so many intelligent people surrender their otherwise good judgment long enough to pull the wool over their own eyes.
Robert Ringer is an American icon whose unique insights into life have helped millions of readers worldwide. He is also the author of two New York Times #1 bestselling books, both of which have been listed by The New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time.
From robertringer.com