After a couple centuries of reasonably successful democratic elections, it seems like a pretty safe assumption that the American political system as we know it is on its way out. Oh sure, this latest campaign cycle has been entertaining, but in the way that watching teenagers kill each other is entertaining for the Capital in The Hunger Games. Nobody feels good about witnessing any of this, but Mad Men is over and there’s nothing better on TV, so we might as well watch the debates, retweet all of the made-up crime statistics, and Google what “democratic socialism” is.
However, a great hero from west Philadelphia (born and raised) may soon save us from this ouroboros of political nonsense. He’ll pull up to the White House about seven or eight, yell to the cabbie “yo homes, smell ya later,” then look at his kingdom because he’s finally there, to sit on his throne as the President Of The United States. That’s right, we’re talking about Will Smith, because apparently he recently realized how much money he has and decided that he should probably be a politician. That comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which quotes Smith as saying that he wants to “elevate” his “ability to be useful in the world.” He notes that his skills as an actor are “elevating,” but it’s still not making him “useful” enough. When he looks at politics, though, he thinks that “there might be a future out there” for him.
Smith says something about politics is making him “incensed to a level that [he] can’t sleep,” so he might have to “lend [his] voice to the conversation” in a different way than simply by being rich. The implication there is that Smith plans to run for a political office himself at some point, but the real question is whether or not America is ready for its first black president who is also an actor. (We’ve had a black president and an actor president, but both?) Also, if a future presidential election comes down to voting between Will Smith and Kanye West, then every brutally annoying campaign season we’ve suffered through will have been worth it.