Oprah Winfrey for President?

This article first appeared in New English Review.




I did not watch the Golden Globe awards show, thus, I did not catch Oprah Winfrey's speech. Only today have I taken the time to watch it. Without nit-picking the content, I think we can all agree it was a powerful speech. She spoke without notes or a teleprompter and showed that she is a gifted public speaker.

I find it somewhat-though not altogether- curious that the left is rising up and declaring Winfrey to be the 2012 Democrat presidential candidate. One poll I saw today declares that she leads President Trump 48%-38%.

To which I say show me a great speaker, and I will show you-a great speaker. History is full of great public speakers who led their nations to disaster. Adolf Hitler was a great speaker who mesmerized millions of Germans. Josef Goebbels was an even greater speaker because he was more gifted with the language than Hitler and had a speaker's voice. I could add Fidel Castro and Benito Mussolini as gifted speakers. It didn't make any of them great men in the positive sense.

I am not in any way comparing Ms. Winfrey to the above people. Ms. Winfrey, I am sure, is a perfectly honorable person with good intentions. I doubt, however, that her great speaking skills would translate into a great president. Here I bring up former President Barack Obama. I would not lump him together with the above names either. However, in my view, Obama's undeniable speaking skills did not translate into him being a great president. Speaking as a conservative and a patriot, I believe he was a very bad president. I recall the speech he gave at the 2004 Democrat convention when he was a still-obscure Illinois politician running for the US Senate. His speech was a spell-binder and did not betray him as a leftist radical. Instantly, people took that speech and spoke of him as a future presidential candidate. Four years later, it happened and he was elected. Great speech-lousy president.

That doesn't mean I am dismissing Ms Winfrey as a presidential candidate, silly as it might seem. My first reflex is to ask,  "Why not Ellen DeGeneres? Why not Barbra Streisand? Why not Tom Brady?" The problem is that we have changed the boundaries in electing Donald Trump. Who would have imagined a couple of years ago that we would elect a famous real estate man as president? But it happened, and now we can no longer dismiss someone like Oprah Winfrey. Can you imagine Winfrey traveling the country and making campaign speeches like that? It worked for Obama, and now that we no longer insist that our presidents come from the ranks of politicians, it just might work for Winfrey.

Full disclosure: I voted for Trump, and I support his agenda (while I often cringe at his style). I am sure that I could not vote for Winfrey because I would not support her agenda, which surely is liberal. What I am saying is this: Anything can happen.