How to Fix Politics: Celebrity Edition

The American political scene is in sorry shape. If you’re reading this blog– or indeed, if you have a pulse– you likely agree with this, so I won’t belabor the point. The standard prescription is to get out and vote. While it’s important that people vote, the idea that ‘our problems would melt away if only everyone got out and voted’ is troubling, because if you vote and feel you’ve done your duty yet voting doesn’t actually do much, it’s ‘empty calories’ of a very dangerous sort. As I get older and (I think) wiser, I find the choices voters get are hardly choices at all. We only get exposed to– let alone get to vote for– candidates that have passed through a huge gauntlet of vested interests. Candidates who won’t rock the boat too much, candidates who will “play ball”, candidates who have essentially sold out, beholden to and dependent on their party, media alliances, and funders. “Get out and vote” is hardly a viable prescription for change when we can choose to vote for Goldman Sachs or Goldman Sachs. The Powers That Be have always been able to vet candidates to some extent, but in the past few elections it’s gotten particularly stark: before, a wildcard like Perot might’ve snuck in, but (love him or hate him) witness what happened to Ron Paul when he tried to circumvent the gatekeepers’ gauntlet. It’s a hard, complex problem. But I see a way to short-circuit a lot of this gatekeeping. Convince more celebrities to run for office. It sounds like a joke, but I’m entirely serious. Celebrities already have their own power base, their own media exposure. They don’t need to mortgage their ideals to get access to voters. They get a (mostly) free pass through the gatekeepers’ gauntlet, and many would stand a good chance at getting elected going head-to-head against the sorts of candidates the major parties field. Clearly we wouldn’t want any old celebrity running for president, but there are celebrities who would genuinely be great candidates. Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio– all potential candidates who would be more electable, likely more competent, freer to speak their minds, and much less likely to respect sacred cows on both the right and the left than anybody the standard party nomination process can produce. And perhaps we see the past with rose-tinted glasses, but it seems like the celebrities we’ve already elected have done pretty well by us.   I’m sure I missed a lot of celebrities who would make good candidates. Who are they?