The George Clooney Op-Ed Is a Scandal

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

 

The polls are dismal. Democrats are staring down the barrel of a wipeout in November. At least a plurality and, in some polls, a majority of Democratic voters are warm to the prospect of replacing Joe Biden with a new nominee. In proactively publishing Biden’s political obituaries, powerful media entities aligned with Democrats have done the president’s brand irreparable damage. The bulk of the party’s most prominent federal officials “want to see him gone” or “think he is going to lose,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s report.

 

In a healthy political environment dominated by strong parties devoted to the pursuit of their prime directive, winning elections, Biden could be compelled to abandon his recalcitrance. But the environment is not healthy, the parties not strong, and their members impossibly insecure. That has led us to the embarrassing spectacle in which actor George Clooney’s intervention into a disastrous news cycle for Democrats represents a sea change.

 

As Michael wrote, Clooney’s more-in-sorrow call for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race has a searingly honest quality about it. His New York Times op-ed provides Democrats with a permission slip to be candid with themselves and others about what they’re seeing from the president. But the outsize influence the op-ed has had on internal Democratic conversations over Biden’s fate is a fascinating artifact of an age when the parties outsourced their work to influencers.

 

“Clooney was exactly right,” former Obama-administration staffer and podcast host Jon Favreau confessed, confirming the accuracy of the actor’s assessment of Biden’s demeanor at a pre-debate fundraiser. “Every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing, except the people working for Joe Biden.”

 

It’s worth remembering that Biden’s obvious incapacity at the fundraiser in question — during which Barack Obama felt compelled to lead the president off the stage like a lost lamb — was treated in the press like a “he said, she said” story.

 

“CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama,” the Associated Press wrote. “THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host Kimmel.”

 

Deadline quoted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who insisted that the embarrassing moment was a near-familial expression of affection and that unflattering media from the event were just more “cheap fakes” disseminated by dishonest political hit men. “A longer version of the moment bolsters that point,” Deadline declared.

 

“As is often the case with recent ‘cheap fake’ stories,” the Daily Beast wrote of the fundraiser’s aftermath, “the Republican National Committee first posted a misleading clip to its RNC Research account on X that cut most of the lead-up to the seemingly innocuous moment.”

 

So much for all that. In one swift motion, a Hollywood celebrity decimated a dubious White House communications strategy its willing abettors knew to be false. Democratic lawmakers, media professionals, and the president’s staff, above all, should not have put themselves in a position in which the whole enterprise rested on the willingness of the famous to subordinate their consciences to their political objectives. The minute the prospect of electoral success was foreclosed, their consciences seem to have taken priority.

 

Robust parties would be built upon foundations stronger than an unspoken code of silence among a handful of wealthy elites. Once the issue at hand is no longer Biden’s political viability, one lesson both parties should take away from this debacle is how desperately they need to reassume some agency and command their own destinies. The country’s future is too important to leave in the hands of the star of From Dusk Till Dawn.