Why We Hate Robot Politicians

Mitt Romney is considering running for President again, for some inconceivable reason. Today, he and Jeb Bush are apparently meeting up in Utah to hash out the details of their proto-campaigns, and perhaps stake out some preliminary turf. This seems like a masochistic move on the part of Romney, who doesn't seem to understand that American is simply not ready for a robot president. Time and time again, candidates show up on the national stage doing their best human impressions—see the GOP's latest SOTU rebuttler Joni Ernst—and time and again, we are either creeped out by them or mock them relentlessly.

Because the nation certainly agrees— Mitt Romney is clearly a robot. Plenty have noticed Mittbot's "uncanny valley" edge. In 2012, Brian Fung wrote a fantastic article about Romney's unsettlingly plastic demeanor, noting that "Much as people are repulsed and disturbed by automatons that mimic humans closely but imperfectly, Romney inexplicably turns voters off despite looking like the textbook image of an American president," Fung wrote. "As with the robotic version of the uncanny valley, the closer Romney gets to becoming real to a voter, the more his likeability declines."

So why does it bother us so much when our politicians behave like automatons?

A collection of Romney's cringiest robot moments. Credit: dissociativepress/YouTube.

Fung nails it with his observation that Romney's clumsiest gaffes are often when he tries too hard to simulate genuine human emotions (and this is all without getting into Ann Romney's eerie role as the quintessential Stepford Wife).

The sentiment was echoed by Greg Gutfeld, a frequent political commentator on Fox and Republican cheerleader no less, who very succinctly summed up why this robotic vibe skeeves voters out so much:Romney suffers from a "robotic malfunction that prevents [him] from seeing words beyond their basic utility; like Robbie the robot from "Lost in Space," he sees no emotional import in his phrasing, so even when he's right, he sounds wrong."

As such, it's no wonder that so many politicians step over the line into uncanny valley. If you are an awkward, aloof person trying to convince people you are charismatic and emotionally open, you're often going to come off as an ersatz human. And though Romney is the apex example of a robot politician, he is far from the only questionable humanoid in the game. Just this week, the aforementioned Senator Joni Ernst delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address as if it was preprogrammed into her circuitry. Behold, a living Polar Express character:

Joni Ernst's SOTU response. Credit: PBSNewshour/YouTube.

As many viewers have noted, Ernst's smile was unnervingly static, her eyes seemed to be searching for some greater meaning in the teleprompter, and her constrained gestures were basically a redux version of the robot dance move. "Jodi Ernst sounds like she should be at the airport telling me the moving walkway is now ending," wrote viewer Jacob Kurtz on Twitter. "She sounds like a automated phone menu reader," tweeted Gabe Logan.

This mannequin-esque quality was all the more noticeable because Ernst had followed President Obama, whose address was punchy and animated. I had expected that a self-confessed hog castrator would have the chops to match that energy. But instead, she became the latest in a long line of politicians who sound like they are secretly in league with SkyNet.

Indeed, Ernst is not even the first politician who sounded like Siril while delivering a SOTU response. When then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius responded to George W. Bush's last State of the Union address in 2008, she sounded even more like an automaton than Ernst did. Seriously, could you ever conceive of someone saying "a town nearly destroyed by a tornado last year" in a more emotionless voice than Sebelius does at 3:58?

Kathleen Sebelius's 2008 SOTU response. Credit: Politiclips/YouTube.

Moreover, Sebelius isn't even the most robotically inclined Democrat in the camp. That honor undoubtedly goes to Al Gore, whose monotone inflection and stiff, automated posture has raised widespread suspicions that he may actually be an android. Add to that his passionate interest in computer science and artificial intelligence, and the accusations start to make a certain amount of tinfoil sense.

But if that still doesn't convince you that Al Gore is just a machine in a flesh suit, consider this Redditor's profound observation: "Al Gore is obviously a robot. Think about it. What do computers need to run? Algorithms. Al-Gore-ithms. Coincidence? Impossible." As far as I'm concerned, this is an open-and-shut case.

By the way, this phenomenon is in no way limited to American politics. For example, check out this BBC interview with Ed Milliband, the leader of the British Labour Party, which took place in 2011. Milliband responds to the interviewer with the same key phrases, regardless of the actual question. The repetition, paired with Milliband's oddly earnest demeanor, gives the impression that his circuits are shorting out, and with each new prod, he just reboots again. It is a thoroughly eerie viewing experience.

Milliband or Millibot? Credit: Ethan515610/YouTube.

Improbably, the world of secret political robot doppelgangers actually gets weirder than Millband's automatic restarts. After the reelection of Representative Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma) in 2014, rival candidate Tim Murray released a letter claiming that the real Lucas had been executed in the Ukraine years ago, and had been replaced by a robot.

Of course, Lucas denied the insane allegations. "Many things have been said about me, said to me in the course of all my campaigns," he said, according to the Huffington Post. "This is the first time I've ever been accused of being a body double or a robot."

Sure, it sound legit, until you realize that that is exactly what a robot imposter with an insatiable desire to rule Oklahoma's third district would say. The jury's still out on this one, as far as I'm concerned. Incidentally, Motherboard's own Ben Richmond also made a great case that Barack Obama himself may be a craftily disguised replicant—a theory enthusiastically supported by Fox News—so clearly, this governmental robo-conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

Moreover, the idea of automated statesmen masquerading under false identities is as prevalent in fiction as it is in the real world. Sometimes it's played for laughs, as with the below sketch from The Muppets, and sometimes it's played for shock value, as with the Patriots in Bioshock Infinite (goddamn them and their stupid crank guns).

"Robot Politician" sketch from The Muppets. Credit: dorcm1973/YouTube.

But occasionally, science fiction authors will question whether robot politicians are really such a bad idea. Take, for example, Isaac Asimov's short story "Evidence," which plays out remarkably similarly to the Lucas/Murray controversy last year. The protagonist, Stephen Byerley, decides to run for mayor of his city, but his opponent claims the real Byerley died in a car accident, and that the new Byerley is a robot doppelganger, and thus unfit for office.

Eventually Byerley is able to prove that he is human, but by that point, Asimov has gotten the readers to question the validity of excluding robots from elected office. "Robots are essentially decent," argues Susan Calvin, Asimov's resident robopsycholgoist. "To put it simply—if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man."

In short: maybe Mitt Romney, Joni Ernst, Kathleen Sebelius, Al Gore, Ed Millband, and Barack Obama really are all robots, that maybe that's an asset instead of liability. When outlining the scope of transhumanist politics, Zoltan Istvan inevitably came to the same question. "Should we let AI run the government once it's smarter than us?" he wonders. "Take that one step further—should we let that AI be the President—maybe even giving it a robot form for aesthetics or familiarity's sake?"

Ruminate on that little piece of brain cud, if you can hack it. In the meantime, I'll be over here watching this video of John McCain looking more human dancing the robot than Romney did during the entirety of his two failed presidential campaigns.

John McCain dancing the hell out of the robot. Credit: James Doe/YouTube.