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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

It's been going on at least since electing Ronald Reagan president in 1980.

And it's not just the USA, see Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, whose resumé previous to being elected president consisted of being a politically relevant comedian.

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The fact that he turned out an extremely solid wartime politician came as a massive surprise to me. At the very least, whoever is in charge of his image is doing a phenomenal job.

I mean, actors excel at "image", that's kind of their job?

I saw someone make an argument that the rise of celebrity politicians is about television. See also JFK, kind of one of the first "celebrity" politicians in the age of TV -- not that he was an actor first, but still.

Yep. America used-to have wheelchair-bound president 100 years ago, for Christ's sake. Now, it would be completely impossible. Presidents have to look good, or at least healthy. Even the senile Joe Biden is actually looking pretty crispy.

Wheelchair users have been elected to Congress in recent times. It's not impossible that one could make it to the Presidency. We just don't have enough data points to draw firm conclusions about how that impacts electability.

FDR (not quite 100 years ago) was wheelchair-bound but very cagey about it. And FDR was hardly fifteen years in the grave before Nixon lost a TV debate to Kennedy by looking pasty.

The senile Joe Biden?

He's 79 years old. Senile means, as per the thefreedictionary.com: "of, relating to, or characteristic of old age".

FDR and his administration went to great lengths to hide the wheelchair. They even made a panel for the resolute desk to hide FDRs lower body when seated. Imaged mattered then as much then as it does now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk

The fact that he's a war time president at all is a massive minus. He ran on a platform of letting the Russian minority get more autonomy - the previous government's slogan was literally military, language, faith - and then launched a major operation against the break away regions more or less as soon as he got in power.

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