Donald Trump and the pop culture presidency
Back during the 2008 US presidential election, his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, released an attack ad that was simply called ‘Celeb’. Intercut with images of Obama being greeted like the headline act at a summer pop festival were Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” the ad noted, portentously. “But is he ready to lead?” The messaging was blunt. The US needed a commander- in- chief not a celebrity-in-chief.
Suffice to say, it was Obama who later took the presidential oath of office rather than McCain. The former prisoner of war, who had turned down the offer of early release from the Hanoi Hilton thinking it cowardly to leave behind his fellow captives, could boast a stirring personal narrative. What he could never match was the personal star power of his youthful opponent. Thus, the ‘Celeb’ ad failed to land its blow. It highlighted a strength of his opponent not a weakness. The fact Obama had become a political idol in a pop idol age helped propel him to the White House.
A decade on, the lines between America’s political culture and celebrity culture have become even more blurred, which explains the rise of Donald Trump. An attention-hungry former reality TV star parlayed his primetime prominence into the presidency. For 14 seasons of The Apprentice, the billionaire sat in his highbacked leather chair making executive decisions, his awe-struck subordinates acting unquestionably on his every command. For millions of his supporters, it did not require a great leap of imagination to see him doing the same in the Oval Office.
Trump more than met one of the main requirements of modern-day political success: the ability to entertain. It mattered not that he had only a limited grasp of policy and world affairs. More important was his talent as a performer. A ratings success on television became a vote-winning success in politics.
This celebritisation of the presidency is hardly a new phenomenon. The inauguration of America’s first reality TV star president came 36 years after the inauguration of America’s movie star president, Ronald Reagan. Before that, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, through his mastery of radio, and John F Kennedy, through his mastery of tv, demonstrated how the tools of mass media could be harnessed for political ends.
Bill Clinton can perhaps lay claim to being the first pop culture president. Whether it was donning shades to play his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show or revealing to an MTV youth forum that he preferred briefs to boxers, he revelled in what had become a job requirement. What once would have been considered unpresidential became standardised behaviour. To not play this game risked appearing prudish and aloof.
Barack Obama went further. Not only was he a pop culture president; he became a pop culture icon. Whereas many of his predecessors looked like they had walked onto the wrong set when they ventured into the world of entertainment, Obama made the transition seamlessly. Mimicking Al Green, dancing with Ellen DeGeneres, appearing on The View or driving around the White House grounds cracking jokes with Jerry Seinfeld became just as much a part of his presidency as more formal appearances. It was no longer a case of stepping between two different realms. There was no line of demarcation. These pop culture moments were used to advance his agenda, as when he slammed- jammed the news with Jimmy Fallon and appeared on Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Both promoted Obamacare, the success of which relied upon young healthy people signing up in vast numbers.
Donald Trump’s great success was to turn the 2016 presidential campaign into an extension of his reality show franchise, and to co-opt all the cable news channels into broadcasting it free of charge. He also built his own media platform, on Twitter and Facebook. Only occasionally as a candidate did Trump venture onto shows like Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Fallon. A master-self-publicist, he was not reliant on these outlets.
With Trump, politics was entertainment, and his campaign mirrored much of the razzmatazz, hype, aggression and faux controversy of one of his favourite pop culture genres, World Wrestling Federation, which had blurred the lines between sport and show business. The nicknames, like ‘ Little Marco’ and ‘Crooked Hillary’. The stadium rallies. The smackdown one-liners.
On reaching Washington, Trump quickly deployed his reality TV smarts. Major announcements, such as his Supreme Court nominee and choice as chairman of the Federal Reserve, are teased on Twitter with tune- in- for- the- next- instalment expectancy. “Welcome to the studio,” he said at the beginning of the first Cabinet meeting of 2018. One almost expected the theme tune from The Apprentice.
Yet this celebrity president has been largely shunned by the celebrity world. It irked him that he could not attract any A-listers to perform at his inauguration.
With the news that Oprah Winfrey is actively considering a White House run, we may have reached the point of peak celebrity in US politics. The logic of Oprah’s backers is straightforward. Lesser-known figures will not be able to compete for the limelight with Trump. It will take a mega-star to beat a mega-star. Others will make the case for competence over celebrity, for knowledge over name-recognition, for experience over entertainment value, for self-effacement over stardom. Maybe America needs a less sensationalised and more low-key form of politics. It maybe not so good for the ratings, but it may well be better for the country. Emphasising governance rather than glitz, maybe it is time to make the presidency boring again.
(Courtesy BBC)