Alice Cooper launches White House bid
With US presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both suffering high disapproval rates, a new outside candidate sees an opening — Alice Cooper.
The veteran shock rocker announced on Monday that he is running for president with the slogan “A Troubled Man For Troubled Times”.
While the 68-year-old has enjoyed a fan base for decades, his platform, unveiled on a campaign website, revealed that he is not overly serious about his ambitions.
Cooper calls for late Motorhead frontman Lemmy’s likeness to be added to Mount Rushmore, the massive mountain sculpture that honours four US presidents, and for comedian Groucho Marx to grace the $50 bill.
Leaving aside sovereignty concerns in Britain, which recently voted to leave the European Union, Cooper’s platform also calls for Britain — where the rocker has long been popular — to put comic Peter Sellers on the £20 note.
Cooper’s campaign so far consists of selling merchandise and reissuing his band’s 1972 song Elected. The song, a hit during Richard Nixon’s successful re-election campaign, ends with a politician promising: “Everybody has problems / And personally, I don’t care.”
Even if Cooper’s campaign is a longshot, another musician — rap superstar Kanye West — has vowed to run for president in 2020.
Trump, a real-estate tycoon and former host of a reality-television game show, himself shocked the political establishment by winning the Republican nomination.
Cooper — t he voice behind youth anthems such as I’m Eighteen, School’s Out and No More Mr. Nice Guy — has in the past described himself as apolitical.
He hinted at Republican sympathies in 2004 when he criticised musicians who campaigned for John Kerry against George W. Bush, arguing that rock and politics should not mix.