Rex Murphy on Obama: America’s celebrity president

Consider Barrack Obama.

Just a week ago, in an effort to mingle with the despised 1% and walk away with bucketloads of money none of them should apparently have in the first place, the president of the United States — once a figure of dignity and prestige — went to a dinner with the Ice Queen of the Fashionistas, the editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour. This was a remarkable turnaround.

About four short years ago, while Obama was still on the campaign trail, he had ascended, as no other political figure in recent years has done, to an altitude of public esteem and celebrity that almost draped him in divine status. (One Newsweek reporter, if those terms don’t nullify one another, even said he was “our god.”) In those high days, Obama didn’t just visit somebody or some group; he bestowed his presence or attention on them. ...

Obama was the supercelebrity of our time. He didn’t need to solicit attention, and certainly never needed to do anything so undignified as ask for money — after every primary, win or lose, his online army mailed in the loot and the big bankrolls of Wall Street and Hollywood couldn’t wait to shower the cool candidate with their cash and cheques. He shone so brightly there were moments in the last presidential campaign when you could reasonably wonder if there was another candidate in play.

And now look at the man, and candidate, this year. He has had to resort to summoning the woman Meryl Streep played so chillingly and with such hauteur in the Devil Wears Prada, Anna Wintour, to do an online pitch for him. It is available on YouTube, and for unintentional comedy it has few peers. Ms. Wintour, with the stare of a condor and a voice that is more Jeeves with a cold than anything heard in Manhattan, “invites” people to join her and (oh, Lord) Sarah Jessica Parker for an evening with Barack, and ends the daunting pitch with the stern warning: “Don’t be late.” I believe the dynamic here was to scare people into coming and giving money. And not incidentally, given that it’s $40,000 dollars a plate, a hint of a threatening menace may indeed be required.

It is not exactly the same as examining the entrails of the temple birds, but when you have Anna Wintour call up Sarah Jessica Parker for reinforcements in order to get people to attend a fundraiser, it’s reasonable to suggest that if the charisma of the candidate hasn’t completely eroded, it’s suffered a terrible downgrade. For it is a rule in these matters that the more famous, the more attractive, cast their light upon the less famous and alluring. In barely four years, Obama has gone from being the remote and singular star to one among many trolling the glitterati for their attention and money.