Why is American politics so obsessed with celebrity?

The biggest winner from Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the United States last week—at least in terms of social media impact—has been Bernie Sanders. His bemittened image, huddled alone in a coat, has been reproduced in countless memes that are somehow still going. Much of the reason for this popularity stems from Sanders’s unvarnished, no-nonsense image: the mittens are handmade, he’s wearing a standard disposable mask, and is clearly freezing.

It’s surprising, though, that Sanders emerged triumphant when Joe Biden was careful to put so much star power on his side. Lady Gaga belted out the national anthem, and Jennifer Lopez sang This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful. Later on, the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, performed at a special concert organised to mark the occasion.

For at least the past century or so, the American presidency has managed to attach itself to the stardom of film and music, earning a sort of refracted glamour in the process. At Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration ceremony in 1957, the opera star Marian Anderson became the first black woman to sing the national anthem, later reprising it for the inauguration of Kennedy in 1961. Kennedy, upon assuming the presidency, was thrown an informal gala by his friend, Frank Sinatra, who flew in Sidney Poitier and Ella Fitzgerald for the occasion. James Brown performed at Nixon’s official gala. Mickey Rooney performed, along with Irving Berlin, after Roosevelt’s third inauguration (which is when the tradition of a big variety show to mark the occasion began). Beyoncé serenaded Barack and Michelle Obama at their first ball, having already performed with Destiny’s Child to mark the presidency of George W Bush.

The cross-pollination has only increased since Ronald Reagan made the transition from Hollywood to the presidency itself. Few film stars are starrier than Kennedy and Obama in their day. Trump, while not a movie star (although he had clocked up a number of cameos by the time he became president, including in Home Alone 2), arrived in the White House on the back of his personal stardom. American celebrities from film and music with anything like a political opinion are routinely asked about transitioning into politics, from George Clooney to Kanye West (the latter of whom made a shambolic run for president last year). Arnold Schwarzenegger was twice governor of California, and Cynthia Nixon ran for governor of New York in 2018. Part of the connection appears to be based on a fairly unironic veneration of the figure of the president, the biggest celebrity of all.

It’s a tradition that has, fairly magnificently, so far failed to catch on in the United Kingdom. The closest the UK appears to have come is the Cool Britannia reception at Downing Street hosted by Tony Blair in 1997, where Noel Gallagher was famously photographed deep in conversation with the then-prime minister. Other attendees included Ralph Fiennes and Helen Mirren. But this era has come to be seen as an embarrassment in the UK, where now celebrities are seemingly more reluctant to throw their stardom onto the PM of the day. Jeremy Corbyn briefly had something going with some of the country’s grime stars in 2017, but that seemed to dry up by the time of Labour’s electoral spanking in 2019. Elsewhere, Glenda Jackson worked as an MP from 1992 to 2015, but in so doing altogether forsook her film career, instead integrating with the Labour Party and working as a backbencher like any other.

Perhaps this difference in attitudes stems in part from the fact that the president’s equivalent role is taken up here by the monarch. The queen, it’s true, is mythologised and celebrated with starry(-ish) ceremonies that may match those organised for the US president; but again it’s arguable that the biggest performers of the day choose not to associate themselves with her. Besides, the queen is an apolitical figure. The same deference and reverence, the conferring of star status on the president is simply not paralleled here, mirroring a national tendency to be suspicious of our political leaders.

To question our attitude towards celebrities and politicians cuts to the heart of our national characteristics. British readers may have seen actors or singers appearing on US late night talk shows, greeted by screams of adulation—a phenomenon which is not matched here, where celebrities are considered much more casually, even routinely disparaged. Idolatry of the famous seems not to exist on the same plane in Britain, where, at a push, fondness (for people who have attained national treasure status) represents the highest esteem in which famous people are held. Our attitude towards politicians exists on the same sliding scale: these are our public servants, rather than gilded statespeople—and I would suggest we smell a rat more quickly when they attempt to use celebrity so nakedly to give their aura a new sheen.

Biden’s use of celebrities represented a careful restoration of the presidency’s aura, which had slipped woefully during Trump’s administration. Trump had only managed to gather some no-names for his ceremony; Joe was able to return the White House to its deserved status. It may be that, pace the Bernie meme, America has begun to look away from celebrity somewhat, recognising the necessity of politicians who confront down-to-earth policy problems in the Sanders mould, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. For now though, the veneer of celebrity is doing the trick.