Celebrity presidents are terrifying

By Staff Writer Sawyer Pollitt.

“Beating Trump would be so easy. So easy. So easy.” was a phrase tweeted by actor and veteran Donald Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin this past week.

It is unclear if he actually intends on running for President of the United States in 2020, but what is clear is that he shouldn’t.

In that same tweet, Baldwin also wrote “If I ran for President, would you vote for me? I won’t ask you for any $. And I promise I will win.” Further adding onto the layer of mystery that already blankets this tweet is the fact that it was made not from Baldwin’s personal account, but from the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation, a foundation that provides grants for arts, culture, youth, and health causes.

An Alec Baldwin presidency, or the presidency of nearly any celebrity who thinks they have the political know-how to run one of the largest and complex countries in the world is terrifying.

After the first several years of Donald Trump and seeing the cult of personality that is somehow still surrounding him, it would be difficult to argue that the country needs anyone who relies on charisma alone to win the election.

America needs a full-time president, someone who has the political experience as well as the ability to unite the country under a common banner.

That is certainly a lot to ask for and is probably impossible.

Having a number of celebrities who may only be running on the platform of vanity will only serve to divide us more and split the vote when it counts.

However, looking at this tweet as a joke does not help the situation either.

Firstly, it isn’t funny. Without getting into the minutia of what makes a joke funny, it is hard to look at this and laugh.

In the current political climate, while jokes are certainly welcome to distract from the insanity of the news cycle, something like this, where a number of celebrities have expressed real interest in running for office, comes off as more of an alarming declaration than as a joke.

Entertaining the idea of a Baldwin presidency though, he’s still at an amazing disadvantage in a political race.

Aside from possibly his philanthropic work through the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation, and his spot-on Trump impression, he has no experience in the world of politics what so ever.

Baldwin may have ideas that could help the United States, but if he can’t execute them in the not so friendly world of American politics, he’ll be dead in the water.

Baldwin has also been arrested numerous times for assault and harassment, pleading guilty to at least one of these charges.

I would like to say that those crimes disqualify him from obtaining the highest office in the land, but one cannot be so sure anymore.

Character now seems like an unimportant factor when looking at who would best serve as the leader of a global super power.

With the Donald Trump presidency, many celebrities feel emboldened to run for president. They, as American citizens, have every right to run for elected office. Aside from fame there is nothing that separates them from most other senators, congressmen, or federal officials.

However, they should think long and hard about if their campaign would do more harm than good in an already fractured and wounded political climate.

There is a slim chance that Alec Baldwin will actually run for president and even be a serious contender at that.

As unlikely as it is, this is what we all said about Trump when he first ran for office in 2016 and look where we are now.

 

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