Political Celebrity Quotes

Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of campaigning with movie stars or sailing with the Kennedys, but the real thing. The candidate himself is glamorous. Audiences project onto him the personal qualities and political positions they want in a president.

Donald Trump understands media. He's a television star. And he's connected with America.

I met someone on the street who said wasn't it great that we're going to have a movie star for president, that it was so Pop, and (laughs) when you think about it like that, it is great, it's so American.

As far as [Donald] Trump and where he comes down on all this, I really don't know. My wild guess is that Trump is a celebrity and I think he thinks it would be pretty cool if he could get Elton John, if he could get some of these people to show up, but right now they won't, because I'm gonna tell you something.

This week you will nominate the most experienced executive to seek the presidency in 60 years in Mitt Romney. He has no illusions about what makes America great, and he doesn't confuse the presidency with celebrity, or loftiness with leadership.

Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi - a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune.

It is Hillary's [Clinton] star power that radiates to every corner of the ballroom. New York bigwigs, such as financial-media impresario Michael Bloomberg, attorney and labor mediator Theodore Kheel, and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, crane to see her.

In a media instant, Sarah Palin went from an unknown moose hunter to a mass phenomenon on the precipice of becoming the vice president of the United States.

In the case of Game Change, the discussion in that film was how our politicians have become so much like celebrities - personality becomes more important than substance so that they can function in a 24-hour news cycle. So the question is, how do you feel about that? Is this what you want from a politician - somebody who's wildly charismatic, but has so little knowledge of substantive issues?

I was both very successful and very left; the living demonstration of how you could be on the left and still be in the gossip columns and be envied for the money you made.

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

In its lowest, most common form, inspiration is simple charisma that becomes magnified by the media, as with Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton.

Not only has celebrity dumbed down our politics, it has become intertwined with it.

The idea of the celebrity politician is nothing new, and depending on one's perspective, either President Obama or Sarah Palin are the country's first celebrity politicians.