Political authority is projected through performed casual ease

Evidence

The more serious issue is that such displays of simulated passion undermine Cameron’s key appeal, which has to do with projecting casual authority: what David Smail, writing before Cameron came onto the scene, called “[t]he confident slouch of the hands-in-pocket, old Etonian cabinet minister.” Cameron’s accent, his posture, his smirk, convey a consistent message: relax, I’m in control, defer to me. When he strays from this “ease and familiarity”, he risks looking angry and/or uncomfortable, and apparent affability gives way an affronted sense of class superiority, as in the “calm down, dear” incident. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1790

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general analysis of performative authority and class signaling across this collection and to Loïc Wacquant-style bodily hexis analysis. — connects to: Institutional fit, not sincerity, makes political conduct feel natural. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1277; Political entrenchment operates through informal and coercive means, not only formal legal rules — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 48

Broader Connections

• Institutional fit, not sincerity, makes political conduct feel natural. #corroborates (0.82) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1277
• Political entrenchment operates through informal and coercive means, not only formal legal rules #expands (0.72) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 48