Celebrities can raise the profile of a candidate or an issue, but they can't shape reactions to policies or furnish solutions to complicated problems, particularly foreign policy. Celebrities carry heavy baggage and agendas. Daniel Drezner, author of "All Politics is Global," observes the good and bad of celebrity endorsements. "So when Angelina Jolie attends the Davos Economic Forum or sponsors a Millennium Village in Cambodia, she's not only trying to do good, she's trying to create a brand image that lets Americans forget about her role in breaking up Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston," he writes in National Interest magazine. When Michael Jordan was still playing on the basketball court and was asked to endorse a Democratic senatorial candidate, he famously said that "Republicans buy sneakers too."
Celebrities, like the politicians they want to be, are vulnerable in the spotlight, which is why Hillary and Obama want to debate foreign policy rather than count the celebrities in their corners. Hillary's resident expert on everything has been her husband, but her attempt to link herself to his foreign policy expertise has backfired. The New York Times observed, with more than a little acid, that during President Clinton's major tests on terrorism, as to whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998: "Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled."
We see the candidates looking both backward and forward with the fading of '07, as they might in "A Tale of Two Cities." Are they enjoying "the spring of hope," or enduring "the winter of despair"? We'll know soon enough, beginning Jan. 3. And Happy New Year to you, too.