Australian journalist Greg Sheridan observes the American presidential election and criticizes both sides, the media, and the American people in general for succumbing to the cult of celebrity:
THIS has been the worst US presidential campaign I’ve ever seen. Vacuous, fatuous, misleading, dishonest, trivial, at times unhinged in its disconnect from reality.
The politics of the world’s greatest democracy has taken something weird in its Kool-Aid.
How can I say this when both candidates are so attractive and so articulate?There is your first clue. The quality of a politician is frequently in inverse proportion to their good looks. Give me John Howard’s baldness, Paul Keating’s hatchet face, Kevin Rudd’s Harry Potter tonsure. The greatest US president of all, Abraham Lincoln, proves the point. He once remarked that he could not possibly be two-faced: “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”
This election marks the triumph of celebrity as the essential organising principle of US politics.
His whole analysis is revealing and despite the third paragraph is not just about “good looks.” (I had to include that in my quotation due to the great line from Lincoln.)
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Rush (no last name needed) says that politics has become show business for people who aren’t physically attractive enough for the movies. (Not exact, but an apt paraphrase.)
Jacques Ellul called this phenomenon _The Humiliation of the Word_.
In an age of relativism, the issue of character is moot. We don’t make decisions based on standards of right and wrong, but based on facts and circumstances in each instance and what feels right. So, inevitably, since there is nothing really to talk about in terms of policy, we go for externals.
Don, may I suggest that your standards confuse issues and candidates? Are we voting for the issue or the candidate? If the issue, then what does the candidate’s character matter? A cad can be pro-life. But if the candidate, why bother with absolute standards of right and wrong? All men are flawed and, in the political realm, most are opportunists. Such has been human nature since the Roman Republic, if not before. We elect men and women to try to govern this large nation, a task that requires innumerable bits of compromise and patience.
A side note: as the presidency becomes ever increasingly imperial, the imperial character, if you will, of the candidate becomes likewise important. We elect out-sized personalities who appeal to us in all kinds of ways. One sad sign that we want an emperor is our habit of referring to our president as the ‘commander in chief.’ He or she is not. According to art. 2 of the constitution, the president is only the commander in chief of the military during conflict. If you’re not in the military, Obama or McCain will never be your commander in chief. Our framers were partial to the legislative branch, in that it was more directly responsible to the people throught its many elected representatives. The fact that our presidential candidates so dominate our thinking (as does the presidency) shows we are out of whack.
While I find that Mr. Sheridan makes some good points about Obama (and McCain), I do wonder if his bias has blinded him a bit.
I mean, does he really think that “both candidates are so attractive”? I don’t mean to be mean, but in what world is McCain attractive? The man has a giant mess of scar tissue on his left side and is 73!
And “Barack Obama is the first pure celebrity presidential candidate … effortlessly detached, as the best celebrities are, from the controversies that swirl around him”? Please. Even as Mr. Sheridan decries the “movie stars” reigning over “some of the worst governed nations in the world”, he seems to have forgotten the one we elected here over two decades ago. You know, the Teflon one. Oh, but he was only about ideas — Obama has none, hadn’t you heard? — and not at all cashing in on celebrity and smooth talk. It’s morning again in America. Hope.
The party of (Sonny) Bono, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger seems to have had its fair share of celebrities before Obama came along, as did the party of Glenn and (Bill) Bradley.
Oh, but I guess we’re not talking about actual celebrities running, since in the cases mentioned above, every single one of them had a rock-solid ideological stance, and not merely fame, as their reasons for running and being elected. Right?
But what about the current President? The one we voted for because we most wanted to have a beer with him. The one ladies swooned over back in 2000? You know, the guy in the flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier. No, he was no celebrity. Pure policy, that one.
Look, I know it’s exciting to think that the current election, whichever one it happens to be, is the defining one, the one that is different from all the others, but this celebrity stuff has been going on for years. Decades, even. This election is not its end, and, I would argue, not necessarily its apotheosis, either.
But anyone who would argue that “Obama’s political identity has been even more plastic,” while ignoring McCain’s sprint to the right in the past year or two, his former “Maverick” bipartisan stance seemingly forgotten, will have a hard time swaying me.
Susan,
“Rush…says that politics has become show business for people who aren’t physically attractive enough for the movies.” Rush said that? Huh. Was he talking about himself?
Sara Palin is not attractive?
‘the Australian’ is a Murdoch publication and is as weird as the Weekly Standard.
I should add that one poll has 75% of Australians supporting Obama.
Pretty Boy Politics–Another reason we should never have given women the vote. Women want the government to take care of them after making poor choices themselves.
To Michael/boot: Rush is not a politician. So, no.
Susan @ 10,
He is a political commentator, though. So isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? I mean, he’s part of the whole machine MAKING these people celebrities.
A stretch. Hope you had fun with it.
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