US President Oprah Winfrey. Well, why not? The days when we might have laughed at such a ridiculous idea are long gone. Now we have in the White House a TV star with zero previous experience of politics or diplomacy. So why not have another one?
Ever since her speech at the Golden Globes, Winfrey has been excitedly talked up as a Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential election. The thinking is that Donald J Trump’s astonishing trajectory has shown the old politics is dead. Now an equivalent global celebrity is needed to defeat him. Winfrey is widely loved, has instant name recognition and makes people feel good about themselves. What’s not to like?
Well, plenty. First, such thinking shows the shallowness of the fundamental objection to Trump: that America’s highest office of state has been degraded by electing a political neophyte with no experience of governing.
Choosing a rival candidate from the same mould would mean that those who want the old political order to be urgently restored have instead decided to abandon it altogether.
Second, it mistakes the reason Trump was elected. Whatever you may think of the flaws in his personality and temperament, his voters were motivated by the concerns he promised to address: the need to uphold the constitution after its erosion by the Obama administration, to revive jobs and prosperity and restore America’s standing in the world.
Those voters believed this could be achieved only by someone from outside the system. Winfrey, by contrast, is the ultimate insider within the Democratic establishment. What important ideas does she stand for? Nothing other than the Oprahfication of American culture: self-empowerment and self-actualisation, otherwise known as sentimentalism, narcissism and fakery.
Take, for example, her promotion of Rhonda Byrne’s hit book The Secret, which suggested that wishing for something hard enough would make it happen. Winfrey promotes such wishful thinking. As she said in her Golden Globes speech, even people who had suffered harsh lives shared “an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning — even during our darkest nights”.
A sign reading "Oprah For President" is seen on top of a building in downtown Los Angeles. Picture: AFP.
Ah yes, hope and change. Now where have we heard that one before? Then there’s her record. Promoting the 2013 film The Butler, Winfrey seemed to suggest that she wanted generations of older people dead because they had racist views. According to the US cable network MSNBC, she said: “There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism. And they just have to die.”
Then there was the quack doctor she championed who promoted “magic” weight-loss beans; her remarks about mad cow disease which caused beef prices to crash; or the harrowing memoir she endorsed about overcoming alcohol and drug addiction that was exposed as a fabrication, and whose author she first defended but then turned on and denied she had done so.
Can you imagine her dealing with North Korea, Iran or even Congress? Of course, Trump’s enemies claim he can’t do so either. Their bottomless hatred of him, however, blinds them to what’s actually happening. His much-derided tweet about having a bigger nuclear button than Kim Jong-un at least moved the North Korean dictator to reopen long-stalled talks with the south. In the Middle East, Trump is ending the appeasement of terrorism-promoting Iran and has helped push Saudi Arabia towards a measure of reform.
In the wake of claims that he was clinically deranged, last week he hosted bipartisan politicians in the White House under the gaze of the news cameras to discuss immigration in an authoritative, informed and humorous way.
Above all, while Trump is authentic Winfrey is a hypocrite. The very things that whip Trump’s enemies into a frenzy — his crudity, vulgarity and brashness — tell his base that he remains true to himself.
Winfrey, who rose from her poor black family to become a billionaire, is the living embodiment of the American dream. Yet she portrays America as riddled by racism and sexism. She poses as a champion of abused women, but she palled around with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton during the years of their abuses without a peep of protest.
It is possible that, by the 2020 presidential election, Trump will have crashed and burnt. Look at his deeds, though, rather than his words. He’s rolling back regulation, creating jobs and stopping the flow of illegal immigrants. He has just secured a massive reform of the US tax code, the first in 31 years. He’s behaving in many ways like a traditional conservative politician and he’s delivering on his promises.
Trump is given no credit, not just because his enemies despise him but because they despise those who voted for him. His supporters’ deep wish to restore America to its historical values and sense of itself is dismissed as proof of their bigotry and imbecility.
These voters know that. Those so cynically promoting the phantom of Winfrey for president are showing once more their contempt for the people. Many of them know that too.
Winfrey versus Trump would not be two TV oligarchs squaring off against their mirror image. It would be the politics of resentment against faith in America. Separate Trump the man from what he stands for, and the idea of President Winfrey becomes again as preposterous as it originally seemed. The Times
