Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith has gone from being “open” to running for president to having “no choice” but to consider becoming a candidate in just under a week.
The people have spoken, it seems, and they cannot be denied.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smith told Jonathan Karl on ABC News’s This Week.
“Here’s the reality: People, literally people, have walked up to me, including my own pastor, for crying out loud, who has said to me, ‘You don’t know what God has planned for you,” Smith continued. “At least show the respect to the people who believe in you, who respect you, who believe that you can make a difference in this country, to leave the door open for any possibilities some to three years down the line.’ And that’s what I’ve decided to do.”
Ross Perot had a similar spiel before he ran for president in 1992 — “Put me on the ballot in all 50 states and I’ll run” — though the draft Perot movement was not wholly organic.
This might just be silly season with the next presidential election 42 months away. President Donald Trump has been back in office for fewer than 100 days. Democrats have no shortage of possible candidates with longer resumes in public office than Smith.
But Smith’s forays into political commentary after years as a sports talking head have been reasonably well received. The punditry game in both professions is remarkably similar, even if many political journalists think otherwise.
Smith has starred on shows that attract higher ratings than many of the leading cable news programs, but the format of people shouting over each other and giving hot takes is much the same.
Many Democrats are willing to concede that their 2024 nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris, lacked authenticity. The same criticism could easily be made of her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), or Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who seems to want to podcast his way down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Whatever else might be said about Smith, he lacks that particular problem.
Democrats are also willing to acknowledge that Trump was already a celebrity before his first presidential run, even if they are still largely in denial about his political talents and appeal. Democrats have a bigger bench of A-list celebrities than Republicans do, even if the GOP has had a decent track record of getting B-list celebrities elected. (Trump was arguably A-list, and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger certainly was.)
If Trump was a famous person who could get elected president on his first try, thanks in no small part to earned, really free, media, maybe Stephen A. Smith could do the same.
What Democrats are less ready to admit is that their party needs a major rebrand and repositioning on the issues. Smith’s political commentary is full of such talk. But there will at least be a “let’s win back the voters we lost” lane in the Democratic primary and perhaps Smith could fill it more credibly than Newsom.
Serious problems remain, however. The first is that Trump had staked out a number of positions that distinguished him from other Republicans by the time the 2016 primaries began. He also had a platform that attracted working-class voters other Republicans could not, and has now won Rust Belt states that hadn’t gone Republican at the presidential level since Ronald Reagan was in the White House in two of the last three elections.
Finally, as with Perot in the 1990s, many voters believed Trump’s business record would translate into running the executive branch of the federal government effectively. Trump wasn’t just famous. He was famous for reasons that made voters think he could be president. Interviewers had been asking him if he was going to run for president for decades before he ultimately did.
Smith has thus far been a television motormouth. He is better in that role than many but not much more than that.
Running for president could derail Smith’s lucrative sports broadcasting career. He reportedly agreed to a $100 million five-year deal with ESPN last month. He would be off the air for at least the duration of any campaign and might become less valuable after taking positions on controversial public policy issues.
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That might be fine for a political commentator like Pat Buchanan, who returned to TV shows that paid him to express his opinions on the issues of the day in between his presidential campaigns. It could work less well in sports.
That this is being discussed at all is a testament to the weakness of the possible Democratic field, which is why Harris became the nominee last time and an aging Joe Biden did four years before that.
