Obama: Rock Star or Movie Star?

Neal Gabler writes in the LA Times that Obama's "celebrity" comes from an emotional identity with voters, and not from "rock star" hysteria:

Obama is attempting the same feat. But as Mailer, a Kennedy admirer, also observed in 1960, this goes against the traditional American political grain. There were many voters, he realized then, who would opt for the "psychic security of [Richard] Nixon," the staid, reliable politics of trepidation rather than "be brave enough to enlist the romantic dream" of America that Kennedy promised. You never quite know where a movie star might take you.

Obama faces that obstacle too. It is the downside of being a star. What this election may finally come down to is a choice between politics and movie stardom, between the safety of what we think we know and the expansiveness of what we dream, or, in more prosaic terms, between good old John Wayne and the less predictable but more exciting Will Smith. In any case, rock stars need not apply.