No experience needed

The distinction between entertainment and politics has been still further eroded by the idea of Oprah Winfrey (!!!) running for president. That Oprah thinks she’s qualified to be president is amusing; that so many apparently agree with her is alarming.

So how have we come to this? To the point where such suggestions provoke encouragement rather than ridicule?

There are a number of possible culprits.

First, a public education system which no longer makes any effort to impart knowledge of our nation’s history or political institutions—when most Americans can’t identify the three branches of the federal government (as revealed by a recent Pew survey), it is unlikely they will insist upon genuine qualifications in selecting the leader of the one called the executive.

Anything becomes possible in a dumbed-down political culture, even the idea of a talk-show host who gives away free cars as commander in chief.

Second is the manner in which our political parties have made themselves irrelevant by “opening up” their nomination processes to anyone who wishes to pursue the presidency under their banners, regardless of experience or even party loyalty (see the GOP and Trump, Donald).

When political parties stop manning the barricades, barriers to entry fall and even airheaded celebrities can storm the palace.

But third and most important has been technological change, more specifically television and the way in which it has transformed political campaigns.

The first inkling of this came from those divergent reactions to the first televised presidential debate between Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960.

Those who watched the debate on television thought Kennedy won because he appeared calm, cool, and collected and Nixon typically awkward and sneaky-looking. Those who listened to it on radio thought Nixon won because, being a fellow of greater intellectual substance and experience, he answered the debate questions more knowledgeably and coherently.

This was a signal that, as Americans came to increasingly rely upon television as their primary source of political impressions, candidates that came off well on TV would acquire an advantage over those who didn’t; that the age of 350-pound presidents (William Howard Taft) and homely presidents with high-pitched, squeaky voices (Abe Lincoln) was over, whatever their accomplishments or qualifications.

Ronald Reagan, a former actor who put himself on the political map with a televised election eve speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater’s doomed candidacy, further advanced this proposition.

To be sure, the “Great Communicator” managed to serve two terms as governor of the nation’s most populous state before seeking (at first unsuccessfully) the presidency, and also wrote perceptive syndicated columns regarding the major issues of the day (détente, the Panama Canal Treaty, SALT II, etc.), but a pattern was being established nonetheless. Those who went to the theater during Reagan’s second term to watch the action thriller Predator, about a group of mercenaries combating a nasty-looking alien in a Central American jungle, probably had no clue they were watching the future governors of California and Minnesota (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, respectively).

Within this context, the successful candidacy of a vulgar reality TV star was no mere “one-off” but a culmination of the triumph of celebrity and the transformation of American politics into sitcom.

If a President Trump is a reality, and a Trump-Winfrey matchup in 2020 more of a possibility than anyone could have remotely imagined just a few years ago, then why not a President Tom Hanks, President George Clooney or President Morgan Freeman? Couldn’t any one of them, and many other Hollywood minions for that matter, not give a better speech than Marco Rubio or Elizabeth Warren, or, given a bit of prep time, easily best the likes of Bernie Sanders or John Kasich in a televised debate?

If the candidates who come off best on television now do the best, wouldn’t actors make, by definition, better candidates than senators or governors? And wouldn’t someone interested in some day becoming president now be better advised to pursue a gig as a talk-show host rather than put in poorly compensated years as a lowly state legislator or attorney general?

Indeed, when traditional qualifications for high office become irrelevant, and celebrity status and persona determinative, why should Kid Rock settle for just senator from Michigan? And why not even a President Beyonce or Snoop Dogg?

An electorate which demands that it be entertained first and foremost, which gets its news from Stephen Colbert and its understanding of health-care policy from Jimmy Kimmel, will inevitably turn to Hollywood celebrities for its would-be leaders.

And at the heart of it all is television, and the manner in which it has helped create a growing disjunction between the qualities necessary to win high office, which now largely involve impressing visually in televised campaigning, and the qualities necessary to actually govern effectively in high office, which require knowledge, judgment and the kind of experience that can only be acquired by holding lesser offices.

It is unlikely that many Americans in 1950 thought that John Wayne, Jack Benny, and Bing Crosby were presidential material, including John Wayne, Jack Benny, and Bing Crosby. They probably would have been laughed at if they suggested otherwise.

So why aren’t we laughing now?