With the rise of potential celebrity presidential candidates, we begin to see people speculating whether certain celebrities would make good presidents, but America’s president should have a political background and experience.
Wylliam Smith
Let’s be honest, just about everyone loves Oprah Winfrey. She is an incredibly motivational, successful, and inspirational person. She deserves every bit of praise she gets from her followers and fans, but there is a large difference between an overall amazing person and a good politician.
After Oprah made another amazing speech at 2018’s Golden Globes, many people felt the celebrity activist should run for the presidency in 2020. People seem to have clouded their judgment in this sentiment. Democrats in particular seem to have completely forgotten their reasons for why they don’t like Trump.
Among many reasons a lot of people don’t like the current president is because he had no political experience. But it seems as though the same people have no problem voting for Winfrey.
Oprah has recently said she actually doesn’t want to run for president in 2020. Regardless, all month since the Golden Globes, people have been speculating, what if she did run?
I think that Oprah is just a Democratic version of Trump. Meaning she has most if not all the ideals that represent the Democratic Party but lacks the actual political experience to be the leader of this country.
The hypocrisy of the situation is almost baffling; people can’t seem to see how similar the two are. Obviously, I mean strictly from a standpoint of political experience. One merely needs to watch one video of both Oprah and Trump to see how their ideals and ethics differ vastly from one another, but that does not mean that Oprah is any more of an adequate political figure.
And that goes for all potential celebrity candidates with no backgrounds in politics. Oprah is not the first and probably not the last celebrity who has been teased to run for president. While Winfrey was asked to run for president and then declined, some actors have openly expressed their interest in campaigning. People such as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kanye West, and Kevin Hart are just to name a few.
It’s all fun and games when it’s just a joke or something that people speculate on. But we have to remember that sometimes satire can lead to dangerous realities. People in this great country have already proven how unreliable they can be when it comes to voting. This past election when I interviewed people on whom they voted for, I had several who said “they voted for themselves.”
And let’s not forget the rumor about Harambe receiving 15,000 votes. Thankfully, this number of people actually voting for the deceased gorilla was proved to be a rumor, but some did in fact write his name in on the ballot.
Not only do we have people like this, but some people merely go and vote without even bothering to look into the campaigns of the candidates, which is just as bad. Even back when Obama was elected, I spoke with many people who stated they voted for him just because he was black. They did this without even looking into any of his political goals and could not even tell me what a single one was.
That’s when it become scary with putting celebrities into the mix, people like this in the spotlight can lead to people to vote for them simply because they know who that person is. This has been proven on the scientific level with the Mere Exposure Effect, which shows that the more people see the something, the more likely they are to like it.
The fact is, I don’t think Oprah couldn’t win the 2020 presidential election if she tried. I am actually more scared that she would win. I think Oprah understands that there is more to politics than fancy speeches, and I hope those who want her to run for president come to see that, too.