Someone please tell Stephen A. Smith to get over himself. It’s all fine and good to make a gazillion dollars dressing loud and talking louder about sports. That clown show has made him rich. So rich he actually thinks his musings about running for president won’t be regarded as farce.
Where’s LeBron when you need him?
The last Black person on a presidential ballot had been a prosecutor, a district attorney, a U.S. senator and then vice president. In other words, she was qualified. And she lost.
Oh, I know a TV personality has won the presidency not once but twice. But Donald Trump has something Stephen A. doesn’t: white skin. For all the raging about DEI, qualifications only really matter if you’re Black. Heck, even Obama - he of the two Ivy League degrees and a term in the U.S. Senate - was dragged by some white voters as unworthy.
It took lightning in a bottle for Obama to win. He had truly rare political gifts.
As a Black Lloyd Bentsen might say: Stephen A., the country got eight years of Obama. He was a talented public servant. Stephen A., you’re no Barack Obama.
If an uber qualified candidate like Kamala Harris is rejected by the white voters she needed to win, Stephen A. should ask himself how they’d respond to his candidacy.
Harris could tell him. So could Tim Scott. And so could Herman Cain before that.
It isn’t just buffoonery for Stephen A. to spout off about running for president; it’s insulting.
He hasn’t served on a school board or on a city council. He’s mostly served himself.
Time was when Stephen A. was a fine journalist. He still has his moments. But he’s more entertainer than journalist now. LeBron didn’t get in the face of the many journalists who criticized his son as a nepo baby who is unworthy of a spot in the NBA. No, LeBron came for the TV talking head who had the same criticism.
Stephen A. has done some great things. He’s been a strong supporter of HBCUs, particularly his alma mater, Winston-Salem State University. He’s worked on children’s literacy and mental health. Bravo on all of that.
But how would Stephen A. handle the Russia-Ukraine conflict? What, if anything, would he do to address climate change, the national debt or health care? What would President Smith’s Middle East policy look like? That’s all a mystery.
Stephen A. has said he doesn’t like the MAGA right or the “woke cancel culture” on the left. He describes himself as a centrist. When was the last time one of those got elected president?
Unless Stephen A. plans to rewrite political rules that have existed since, oh, forever in this country, he would need to join a party. He’d have to win that party’s nomination. And he’d have to do that by not ticking off too many voters in the other party. He won’t get to hide in the middle and blather banalities about “both sides.”
Stephen A. is very good at what he does for a living. A big part of that is drawing attention to himself. It’s often cringey, but it’s not a crime. It’s also not prep for the presidency.