Why we'll (probably) never have a celebrity run for President

I'll eventually meander to my point. First there's the whole real life example that got me to thinking, plus I can't resist a detour through why I like term limits, and then I'll close with some necessary swearing just to prove how hip and culturally relevant I am.

There's an interesting debate going on at Hammer of Truth about the viability of the announced Presidential campaign of Doug Stanhope. They tell me Stanhope is a celebrity, although I haven't really heard of him. The kind of guy that you tell me where I've seen him and I say, oh yeah I think I know who you mean. I look at his face on his website and no bells ring. To test my cultural relevance, I checked the Billboard Hot 100 and would recognize three of the artists of the top five songs if I saw them on the street - better than I predicted - so maybe I am an average pop culture consumer.

Stanhope's announcement rubbed me a number of wrong ways. Yes I have officially achieved the state of old fuddy duddy - swearing in public communications offends me. It works for Enimem, but I doubt Mr. Mathers would consider running for President. If you can't get through a paragraph without getting bleeped, I don't want you representing my party.

Going out of your way to insult Jesus also is the mark of the loser. Now, you don't have to be a Christian to be a good public servant. I take great pride in recruiting not one but three Pagan priests to run for office here in NC. Not to mention the large number of openly atheist Libertarians I helped put on the ballot. It's everybody's country, not just for us Christians. But consider that fully 7/8ths of the voters self-identify as Christians. Then consider just how intensely stooopid it is for a candidate to insult them. I realized later that even more offensive to me than insulting my God is the implication that voters who "buy Jesus" are dumb. Anybody who is so arrogant as to openly say voters are dumb is automatically disqualified from serving in public office in my book.

But my problem really isn't with Stanhope. After all, he is a comedian just trying to do his job, even if I didn't laugh at this particular joke. And he did succeed in his secondary goal - I now know who he is. Doug is probably a great guy and I'm glad he is on our side. If your first myspace friend is Dave Attell, you are almost certainly my kind of people.

No, my problem is with otherwise intelligent people getting all excited about this campaign and trying to convince me that Stanhope's E-list celebrity status will somehow help the Libertarian Party. Some even invoke the name of Kinky Friedman to prove their point. Now that's just hype gone crazy. Kinky isn't just already a celebrity in Texas, he's a national icon. You might as well compare Stanhope's celebrity to William Henry Harrison's. It's just as relevant.

Now of course there is an obvious counterexample, Stanhope's friend and supporter Penn Jillette. Penn would be a fantastic candidate for us. He's 100 times more famous, already gets paid to articulate common sense stands on today's issues and can get through a speech without swearing. But he'll never run for President. If you don't believe me, there's an episode of Babylon 5 where he explains his position on the question in great detail.

The question reminds me of my old friend and boss Howie Rich, when Howie convinced me to change my position on term limits. Until then I took the purely theoretical Libertarian view that no citizens should be arbitrarily barred from public office, not even incumbents. But Howie pointed out that with career politicians the seniority system takes control of the legislative hierarchy. What incentive is there for someone who has earned success on their own merits in some other aspect of life to go into politics, where they have to toil away on the back bench for years and years just to get anywhere no matter how good they are? And you wonder how we ended up with a President who managed to lose money on both an oil company and a baseball team?

Later personal observation confirmed Howie's view for me. I found that it takes right about six years for the average NC state legislator to completely lose touch with anything that goes on outside their little building. Oh sure, some of them were that way before they went in and a blessed few manage to get through a whole career remembering who they serve. And now that some states have term limits, we can see that the program has delivered on its promises of the benefits of a citizen legislature. At least term limited legislators are much more likely to want to get out of town and back to their real lives, instead of just siting around indefinitely having fun spending other people's money because they have nothing better to do.

Of course we already have limited our President's terms. But the same principle explains why Penn Jillette will never run. Why the hell would he want to be POTUS when he already has a much better job? I know if I was a Vegas headliner I wouldn't be giving that up for nothin'.

Only one possible motive remains for any real celebrity to want to be our candidate. That person would have to be a zealot. Or put it nicely, someone who really believes in public service. Someone like Ralph Nader. Which gets us to another long held theory of mine - anyone who truly wants to be President is almost certainly too mentally unstable to be trusted with that much power. But that's a conundrum I am willing to live with if the candidate is credible enough.

We thought Harry Browne's bit of celebrity would help us. We found out he wasn't nearly famous enough. Aaron Russo is as famous or more than Doug Stanhope, but that wasn't enough to overcome our justifiable fear of putting a wild man at the top of our ticket.

Now, Doug Stanhope might be the perfect candidate for another long time pipedream of mine: the Fuck You! Party. "Want to send the politicians a message they can't ignore? Vote Fuck You!" If there's any chance to get the nonvoting half of the country back in the voting booths this is it, I'm telling you. I've done enough research to know there are absolutely no prohibitions against obscene party names in any state or federal laws regarding advertising or printing ballots, so you'd have 'em over a barrel if it ended up in court. One of those fun things I'll do when I win the lottery.

I'd be thrilled if we could get a real Libertarian with real celebrity and at least a modicum of gravitas to run for President. But I ain't holding my breath. In the next two years I expect to work for the best candidate available, whomever that might be.

Disclaimer: I am currently the Treasurer of the George Phillies campaign.