Our strange, generic ‘NPC’ political moment

Mike Johnson and Dean Phillips sound like the names you might make up if you were feeling creatively uninspired. But in 2023, Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Dean Phillips are real people — with real power.

These congressional backbenchers have moved up from House anonymity — just two random, generic 50-something white dudes out of the 435 — to suddenly becoming seriously relevant to our political and cultural discourse. There’s a term in video games called “NPC” — a “non-playable character,” referring to the dull automatons that populate the background of the action.

Johnson and Phillips were D.C. NPCs just mere months ago. You didn’t see them in cable news green rooms or on the Sunday morning news shows. They weren’t busy building their social media brands through viral X threads or bombastic YouTube shows (although Johnson actually did have a nice little podcast with his wife).

So what’s behind these NPCs becoming real players? It’s a symptom of our bizarre 2023 cultural and political moment.

Let’s look at Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota first, who last week made it official and announced a Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden. Phillips has a real strategy, which only exists because of an opening from the Biden camp. Biden and his advisors wanted to change the 2024 primary process and make South Carolina the kickoff state, removing Iowa and New Hampshire from their typical early roles. While Iowa played ball, New Hampshire stayed with their date and will still hold their Democratic primary before South Carolina. And now Dean Phillips will put all his time and energy into “beating” Joe Biden in the first primary state.

If he emerges victorious there, he’ll have some momentum, either real or perceived, and with it, a tremendous amount of media coverage. Biden is very unpopular, almost historically so for a sitting president running for reelection. And this whole time he’ll be one errant sandbag away from another Biden slip, and, potentially, the driver’s seat to the nomination. (It’s worth mentioning here that Phillips is being advised by Steve Schmidt, the former John McCain aide turned Resistance darling turned self-obsessed media presence — so this NPC certainly has a very active character by his side).

This enviable position has been grabbed by the nondescript Phillips because no serious contender ever emerged on the Democratic side. Phillips actually told reporter Peter Hamby he tried to convince Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to take on the challenger role before he reluctantly jumped in. No one wants to rock the boat, or face the backlash. We live in an era of extreme cultural safety, where so many in power are nervous about a few hundred angry social media comments. They don’t want to risk their platform, so the task of primarying a vulnerable Biden falls to Generic House Democrat with nothing to lose.

Which brings us to Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who was literally nobody’s first choice to become the Speaker of the House. Suddenly, this similarly nondescript congressman is second in line to the presidency. But Johnson’s rise can only be properly contextualized by looking at how his new position became open in the first place.

Rep. Matt Gaetz is perhaps the poster boy for harnessing all the worst incentives that our current media environment presents to rise to fame. And he decided to throw the House into upheaval because of a personal beef he had with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, beginning a domino effect that saw multiple “next-in-lines” fail the Goldilocks test over and over again — insufficiently vanilla enough to be deemed “just right,” and failing to gather the support of enough Republicans to get across the finish line.

Now one of the most powerful political figures in America is a little known congressman who holds that position precisely because the most powerful figures that existed previously are too present in our media and culture already to do a job that requires building a consensus through compromise. (I should say, Phillips and Johnson both seem like nice enough men — it’s nothing personal.)

And this all exists while the GOP is in the midst of a zombie 2024 primary. The Republican primary may feel vaguely familiar, but it is all just a facade, as the frontrunner is barely participating and the various contenders are going through the motions for what feels like a foregone conclusion.

In this bizarre moment, we’re bridging the desire of our supposed leaders to display extreme cultural safety verging on self-preservation, while a corporate press amplifies the most divisive points of view and enables all the wrong incentives.

Of course, 2024 could get interesting in an instant. It’s been awhile since America has seen a presidential candidate run for office from prison — and, potentially, win. Trump will always bring the fireworks.

And there’s the potential for the DNC to step up and bypass their gnat of a candidate in Phillips and replace Biden with a big gun, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, sometime shortly after the Democratic convention.

In this current iteration of our culture, the most watered-down, bland, spice-less among us earn elevation. Speaker Johnson and candidate Phillips, good luck on your quest to overcome your NPC roots, and bask in the media and cultural spotlight for a little while. At least until Lauren Boebert goes to another musical.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.