Celebrity Politics
A conversation with friend and colleague Charles Madigan about celebrity in politics.
Charlie: Has celebrity become the most natural launch pad for a political career and is that a good thing? Donald Trump’s blowhard politics seemed to transition flawlessly from cable TV to the presidency. And an even earlier example, Ronald Reagan, rode to political fame on the back of the Pacific Coast Borax Co.’s 20 Mule Team Borax, sponsor of Death Valley Days. To be sure, their competence as celebrities did not translate into competence in the presidency. But it did wonders for name recognition!
There is an even better example of this phenomenon.
Vladimir Zelensky, well before he became the leader of an embattled nation, was a TV star. He played a high school history teacher in Servant of the People (worth watching on Netflix) who is on YouTube in a rant on corruption in Ukrainian politics. His students spread it everywhere, and before you know it, he is elected president.
Photo by Paul Bradbury for Getty Images
It doesn’t stop there.
He is elected president in real life, largely from the fame he earned by playing a diligent, honest high school teacher. Surely Zelensky carries bravery, integrity and creativity into the post, so it’s not all about TV. But sometimes it is.
Jim: My knee-jerk reaction is that the celebrity culture pollutes our politics and press. When you relate the story of Zelensky, though, it prompts me to think a little deeper about what celebrity really means. Maybe it has a good as well as a bad side.
Zelensky’s the good side. He used his celebrity to become a true leader, someone amazingly agile at marshaling the forces of democracy in America and Europe to defend his country against a brutal authoritarian invasion. He turned his celebrity into a positive force and raised important issues on a global stage.
I think the same can be said for Reagan. He leveraged his celebrity into leadership, taking the country in a direction that won approval of many Americans. Although I can’t say I agreed with many of his policies, particularly the tax and economic measures that piled more debt on the nation’s Treasury, I must admit he grew into an effective leader who delivered on his beliefs. And he didn’t lie about where he thought the country should go. The Iran-Contra scandal was about the only exception when he got caught secretly funneling arms to Nicaraguan rebels in violation of Congressional wishes.
And then we come to President Trump. As you might suspect, I consider him the bad side of celebrity. He descended the famous escalator onto the national political stage from a splashy cable TV show and never left the celebrity stage. Trump wasn’t all bad. He delivered on many of his campaign promises to his base even if I don’t agree with the results. But his promises far exceeded his achievements. Trump remains a captive of his celebrity to this day. He’s never crossed the bridge between celebrity and leadership. The toll is too high for his narcissistic personality. Instead of leading his audience, he followed it with disastrous consequences. Leadership involves doing the right thing and standing up to power. On January sixth, he simply played to the crowd. A real leader would have shouldered the burden of defeat and would have stopped the mob he created from doing harm. He came to the White House a celebrity and never grew beyond that.
And then we have celebrity in the mold of George Santos, the prevaricator who got elected to Congress by lying about everything in his past and present. House Republicans lack the guts to kick him out of Congress. Hopefully Long Island voters will dispatch with this national embarrassment in two years. But he’s achieved celebrity as a colossal liar. I’ll bet he gets kicked out of office and then ends up on the celebrity circuit like a political version of a Kardashian. Do you ever think we’ll get back to the point where people are judged on merit instead of fame?
Charlie: Sure Jim, all we must do is kill the internet, cable TV and a dozen other little communications media that celebrities have taken over, then sit America down and talk about the value of an informed electorate and, of course, encourage people to vote.
You are, of course, right about Santos because that’s how things seem to work these days. Fame, infamy, it’s all the same thing. It has slipped beyond the medium/message debate and mutated into a surreal circus-like place where clowns have as much weight as trapeze artists.
About the most we can do is be aware of it, which might be an important enough change. We need to be smart and keep our guard up against people who are not Zelensky, not even a little bit.
Jim: I don’t know that we’re going to get there with the way the press works today. It would be nice if reporters focused on the negative impact of celebrity on politics. But our news shows seem inundated with political operatives who masquerade as journalists, all in hot pursuit of the TV camera and name recognition in case they get another shot at grabbing the brass ring. We are saturated with people whose only goal in life seems to be fame. I had my fifteen minutes of fame when the Tribune Company sent me west to become the editor of the Los Angeles Times. I arrived amid a staff rebellion against owners from Chicago, which was my home. People wrote many stories about me and almost anything I said found its way into the media. I was a “celebrity” and I hated it.
—James O’Shea and Charles Madigan
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.
Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.