The 2008 Presidential Campaign and The Power of Celebrity

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

February 22, 2008

Hillary Clinton is obviously smart, quick on her feet, experienced in the ways of government and politics, and works hard to master what a president of the United States must know.

Until voters started casting ballots in Iowa, Clinton and her campaign's inner circle were certain that these attributes, plus her advantages built from eight White House years and another eight in the U.S. Senate would put her on cruise control for the Democratic Party's nomination. It was an expectation shared by much of the insider media, the gray beards of Washington and the custodians of the political smart money, who contributed tens of millions of dollars to fuel her campaign.

For all their work and planning---which was meticulous and extensive---the Clinton people missed one important factor. They were running against a celebrity.

Hillary Clinton herself is a celebrity politician. But Barack Obama is a real celebrity.

And we are a nation obsessed with celebrities, not politicians.

Here's one measure of the celebrity gap between the nation's serious interest between real celebrities and politicians. People magazine has a circulation of about 3.5 million readers. The largest liberal political journal, The Nation has 175,000 subscribers. The largest conservative journal, The National Review goes to only150,000 homes.

Here's another: In a few days tens of millions of TV viewers will lock the doors and take their phones off the hook for an uninterrupted evening of Oscar presentations. All of the televised presidential debates so far this election cycle combined have attracted but a minor fraction of that audience.

Remember when you were a kid in school and some boys and girls were deemed by consensus the most popular kids there? They had something most others didn't possess---looks, style, athletic ability, manner of speaking, money----some set of assets that made them special. Then we grew up and it went on from there: movie stars, rock stars, glamorous athletes….the rich, the famous. We read about their marriages and divorces and other intimate details of their lives. We stand in long lines to see them. Celebrities.

Barack Obama is a genuine celebrity.

Two dozen candidates began this year's race for the presidency. Only Obama has been able to draw tens of thousands of people to rallies. In January, when most other candidates had either fallen by the wayside or were tapped out of campaign money, Obama raised $32 million----$28 million of it over the Internet. In Texas the other day he stopped his speech to cough, and even that got applause.

This doesn't happen in politics.

Each year Fortune magazine rates the 100 most popular celebrities, using a formula that measures earnings, press clippings, magazine covers, TV /radio appearances, and Internet Web hits. As you would guess, the list is heavy with entertainers and athletes. In 2007, only three of the 100 had any connection to politics and government: Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan and Rush Limbaugh. No governors. No senators. No members of Congress. No current office holders or candidates.

Generally, politicians are famous only in their constituent worlds. Obama is different.
It's no small coincidence that the size of his crowds kicked into the megasphere about the time Oprah Winfrey started appearing in public with him. On Forbes' most recent celebrity list, Oprah ranked Number 1.

Oprah was the jump start. But Obama has done it on his own since then.

Celebrities are bigger than life because we still believe we can be like them, the way we looked up to the popular kids on the playground. They do all the things we wished we could do, and more. They become role models, whether they are on the silver screen, the fashion runway or the NASCAR race track.

Somehow, Obama has captured that aura of celebrity. His hair looks like it's glued to his head. His ears are too big in proportion to the size of his head. He's so thin you want to tell him to "eat, eat."

You might understand all of this excitement for a George Clooney. Or, in his day, a Robert Redford. I don't fault the Clinton people for failing to recognize that Barack Obama was about to morph into a genuine national celebrity, with the kind of magic that makes some admirers swoon and faint at his rallies.

We don't particularly see the magic in his TV debate performance, where he does credibly, but never seems to blow out other candidates. A celebrity like Obama is like a rock star. He needs to be in public, and appear before large crowds. In 2005, the band U2 was the top grossing rock group on the circuit, grossing more than $150 million. Most of it came from live concerts, not album sales. At some concerts that year they would haul in $150,000 a night just selling merchandise to fans desperate to wear their T-shirts.

Obama's mental assets and his commitment to issues are not trivial. But neither were those of candidates he's already vanquished on the campaign trail, most of whom had far more actual experience in government and politics. What Obama has, and they lack, is the power of real celebrity.

That's what's Hillary Clinton is now up against, and why she's now laboring uphill instead of taking a victory lap.

Against this kind of force, John McCain doesn't stand much of a chance, either. But November is a long way off in political light years. And McCain has to hope that Obama's celebrity is like many of those who make Forbes list---fleeting.

For the moment, though, the Great Obama Victory Tour is still knocking them dead wherever it sets up its stage. And they are selling a lot of T-shirts.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.