Nearly all sports fans, even the crustiest, become easily infatuated with new talent. It’s easy to understand why. The number-one draft pick has never thrown an interception for the home team. His promise is infinite.
National politics has always been different. Even newcomers to presidential politics will have toiled for years in the public eye, voting on complex issues or making the tough choices long-time governors confront.
They will have taken stands unpopular with the party faithful (Rudy Giuliani), taken stands unpopular with the party faithful and then reversed themselves (Mitt Romney), taken stands popular with the party faithful and then reversed themselves (John Kerry), or participated in more drama than the voters cared to witness (Hillary Clinton).
A few presidential candidates have maintained their ideological purity and in the process built a core of infatuated supporters. But they confronted the tension between leading an ideological movement and gaining the broad-based support necessary to win. In modern memory, only Ronald Reagan pulled it off.
John Kennedy and Bill Clinton tried to generate infatuation through charisma. But neither could fully escape his highly visible past. Liberals were not wild about Kennedy’s record of cautious pragmatism.
They found more to like in Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson. Kennedy won because he was better funded, better organized, and more aggressive. Clinton also was seen as too much the pragmatic centrist, and nearly sank after years of reckless personal behavior came to light. Only a weak Democratic field saved him.
But, if purity, probity, and post-partisanship are incompatible with possessing a political track record, perhaps the requirement of a track record can be finessed. This was Barack Obama’s wager.
By serving a left-wing constituency in the state house, Obama easily established his ideological purity. By arriving in Washington already focused on a prompt presidential run, he could make sure his Senate votes maintained that purity. And as a fresh, smooth-talking newcomer, he was able, despite his pure ideology, to introduce himself to the public with conciliatory, high-minded, post-partisan rhetoric.
But Obama’s real stroke of genius was the realization that he could substitute his celebrity – based on a charismatic 2004 convention speech, his cool, and his race – for the credentials normally expected of a presidential candidate.
Obama succeeded thanks to two phenomena, one cultural and one political. First, in the age of Oprah, celebrity has become the coin of every realm. Second, the public is now so displeased by our politics that many regard the lack of immersion in them as a plus, not a minus.
As the Sean Connery character in “The Untouchables” put it when he went looking for an honest cop at the police academy, “If you’re afraid of getting a rotten apple, don’t get it from the barrel, get it off the tree.”
Even Obama may have been surprised by the phenomenon he produced as millions poured their hopes and dreams into the mostly empty vessel of his candidacy. Buoyed by his astonishing success, Obama doubled-down on celebrity. He came up with his own seal and toured Europe.
Obama could not escape his past entirely. In particular, he could not escape his association with the anti-American preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, by the time those “chickens came home to roost,” Obama seemed virtually bullet-proof.
John McCain understood that he could make no significant head-way against Obama the candidate until he took on Obama the celebrity. He thus launched an ad that ridiculed his rival’s celebrity status, placing it in the context of the culture that produced Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. Assisted by Obama’s failure to dial back on his celebrity, McCain reduced his deficit in the polls.
But the McCain campaign’s real stroke of genius was the realization that, through his selection of a running mate, McCain could jump-start his campaign by taking advantage of the same celebrity culture he had ridiculed. McCain accomplished this almost instantaneously through Gov. Sarah Palin.
Given the differences between the parties, it is hardly surprising that Obama and Palin diverge sharply when it comes to policy and personality. But for the purposes that matter at the intersection of politics and celebrity, they are nearly the same.
Like Obama, Palin hasn’t been around long enough to have displeased the party’s base. Like Obama, her “life story” reinforces the seeming purity of her ideology. With Obama it’s the Ivy League education coupled with community activism; with Palin it’s the moose hunting, the decision to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome, and the willingness to fight corruption. And in both cases, the persona reassures the faithful: he combines “cool” with soaring rhetoric; she combines femininity with tough talk.
Finally, both get the identity politics just right. He is the African-American who promises to usher in an era of post-racial politics; she is the woman who points towards a truly post-feminist future.
Obama announced his arrival in 2004 with his keynote speech to the convention. Palin stormed into our living rooms with her acceptance speech earlier this month. The “first round draft pick” few had heard of two weeks earlier led the home team to a touchdown on her first drive.
Dick Morris and Peggy Noonan promptly declared Palin an existential threat to liberalism and the Democratic party, while more than one pundit compared her to Ronald Reagan. Republicans were certain they had found the perfect vessel for the hopes and dreams they had been forced to suppress during the difficult Bush years and a profoundly unsatisfying nomination process.
The key portion of the game has yet to be played, though. There’s the matter of the vice presidential debates, for example. Nor is it clear that celebrity politics will work at crunch time when candidates must seal the deal with voters. And, having shot up so suddenly, Palin’s star could fade more quickly than Obama’s.
But if the electorate recoils from celebrity politics, the Republicans will have this advantage – they are not substituting celebrity for a track record at the top of the ticket.
Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer in America’s capital and a principal author of Powerline.com.
