Rockstar politics

Seth Michaels

At this year's Oscars, at center stage sat former Vice President Al Gore. Before An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about his quest to raise awareness about climate change, Gore's pop-cultural heights included appearances on the sketch-comedy show Saturday Night Live and the cartoon Futurama. At his appearance before Congress this week, everyone was clamoring for a look. He's grown to full-blown celebrity status, and anticipation of another run for the presidency is so thick that Gore could include in his Oscar appearance a joke about the buzz.

However, observant audiences saw another notable winner this awards season. This time, it wasn't a social crusader-turned-celebrity, but a celebrity-turned-social crusader. Bono of U2 was given the NAACP Chairman's Award in recognition of his work with the ONE Campaign, which pushes for large-scale solutions to the crises of extreme poverty and AIDS.

After an award-lift (practiced from many Grammys) and an obligatory nod to the attractiveness of presenter Tyra Banks, Bono implored his audience to join his anti-poverty campaign.

Bono's speech was inspirational, lovely and urgent, but it was also a masterful piece of political theater. The self-described "very white" musician was savvy and on-message, keen to the history and priorities of his nearly entirely African-American audience. It felt a bit like a good stump speech: well-dropped laugh lines, impassioned applause points, a canny thank-you to a political partner in the audience (US Rep. Barbara Lee from Oakland, California), and, of course, a final call-to-action that urged the audience to get involved.

It had all the hallmarks, then, of a well-targeted campaign appearance - not entirely unlike another such appearance the very same day: presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Romney's speech can be found here. This audience wasn't looking for quite the same things as Bono's, mind you, but the principle is the same. Instead of praising Martin Luther King, Romney complained about Ted Kennedy. Instead of evoking a world united, Romney spoke of implacable cultural conflict. And instead of giving the thumbs-up to America's Next Top Model, Romney was honored to share the stage with the loathsome Ann Coulter.

But success in US politics depends in no small part on one's ability to play to numerous - and extremely different - constituencies, while still getting the approval of the larger whole. And something tells me Bono's speech would be a little more palatable than Romney's.

Now, the 2008 Presidential race already has its "rock star" in Barack Obama, who was given an NAACP Chairman's Award in 2005. The race may eventually have a movie star in Al Gore. Like another politically prominent US politician, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono wouldn't be eligible for the presidency (since he was born in Ireland). He won't be throwing his oversized sunglasses into the ring. But there's no denying that he's proven himself quite a good political player.

Rockstars and actors are better at this sort of thing. I predict the Bono/Oprah ticket would sweep to a landslide victory.