No, I did not watch the so-called leader of the free world deliver his nationally televised address which only re-hashed some of his favorite lies about our southern border. I followed along via Twitter and read the transcript, and I did the same for the Democratic response. What struck me most about the reaction to Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Pelosi was not the memes that quite frankly, their stance invited, but the criticism that they were “stiff” and “wooden” in their delivery.
It made me wonder when this entered our expectations of our political leaders. When did it become necessary for politicians to entertain the crowd instead of being effective at governance?
It wasn’t with the Trump campaign; his was only the culmination of what appears to have been a gradual, hardly noticeable mixing of entertainment with politics. Was it the saxophone-playing Bill Clinton, who appeared on the Arsenio Hall show in 1992? Or even earlier, when he appeared on the Johnny Carson show within days of his disastrous 33-minute speech introducing Michael Dukakis to the 1988 Democratic National Convention?
Perhaps it was when we elected a movie star to be our nation’s leader. Ronald Reagan defeated a man of decency and honor who was sadly uncharismatic and had the temerity to ask that we behave as responsible citizens.
Or did it start with the introduction of television? Before Reagan, John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon on television. I decided to look a little closer at when, exactly, we reached this point in our nation’s history, when a politician is judged not on ability to govern, but to entertain.