The shtick that carried Beto O’Rourke in 2018 is tiresome. This time, he’s winning at losing
Watching Beto O’ Rourke unabashedly run for high office — his third time now — is a bit like watching a famous actor win an Academy Award for a film you hated. He might be flashy and famous, or course, but the recognition hardly guarantees a promising future.
Plenty dubbed O’Rourke the winner of the debate against Gov. Greg Abbott last week, and that makes sense, if winning means talking over your opponent, spouting standard liberal positions and repeatedly blaming Abbott for, well, everything. Never mind the fact that Abbott’s still ahead of O’Rourke in the polls by a comfortable margin, but sure: O’Rourke is winning at losing.
Hollywood christened O’Rourke the “it” guy when he ran against Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. By then, Democrats were energized against Donald Trump and any of his allies — so his opponents got an automatic boost. For a minute, O’ Rourke shone: As handsome as JFK, as charismatic as Bill Clinton.
“Not since the press corps fell in love with Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign has such a sirocco of worshipful candidate profiles and commentaries appeared in the national press,” Jack Shafer wrote in Politico, noting O’Rourke was ubiquitous.
Tanned and confident, casually air-drumming to The Who as he drove through Whataburger, O’Rourke made women swoon and men grin. That Beto: He’s Everyman.
He narrowly lost but parlayed it into a run for president. For a hot minute, Hollywood embraced him again, but no-go. Now, in 2022, we’re doing it again: The same splashy profiles. The same punchy one-liners. The same quirky-but-cool tweets. The same sporadic-feeling but pre-planned F-bombs — one directed at a veteran, no less. The same kind of celebrity endorsements. (Did you expect anything different from Harry Styles?)
The problem with shtick in politics is that it’s short-lived. Everyone knows it now but O’Rourke, so, for many, it’s become off-putting. In their own way, O’Rourke and Cruz were perfect opponents: smarmy, right-left mirrors of each other, each reflecting their own slickness.
Abbott is a politician, sure, but he’s not a smarmy one. He’s generally judicious, analytical, factual and logical. You can’t out-one-line Abbott because he thinks in paragraphs. It’s not enough to echo O’Rourke and say, “We need solutions, not stunts.” Tell that to the guy who’s been grappling with it for eight years while O’Rourke’s been smiling for magazines.
O’Rourke’s flashy but “regular” persona is important to understand because it’s how he’s gotten to this point. It certainly wasn’t because he accomplished a lot in his three terms in Congress representing Texas’ 16th District. It certainly isn’t because he had experience that indicated he’s prepared to govern the state of Texas. It certainly is not because his ideological beliefs are persuasive — they’re in fact quite prosaic, and quite wrong. When you strip away the persona, the only thing left is his extremism.
He attracts fundraising dollars from Hollywood elites because he embraces their views: From wanting to ban AR-15s that he labels “weapons of war” to backing abortion on demand and pledging to somehow raise teacher pay and lower property taxes at the same time, O’Rourke is just a classic liberal. At this point, it’s kind of boring.
Even on immigration and border security, the issues Texas voters care most about, O’Rourke hates Abbott’s effort to bolster state involvement and said in the debate that he’d stop spending money on it, period. Yet on his website, he advocates for “more smart technology like sensors, surveillance towers, and drones,” which would require taxpayer funds. He also mentions the incredible idea of deterring illegal migration by “guaranteeing legal pathways.”
Hollywood stars fell in love with O’Rourke, and now they’re among the few who still accept the charade. Texans have moved on.
As politicians go, he’s practically guaranteed an Academy Award. As for being governor of Texas, he’d flop like a bad film.
This story was originally published October 5, 2022 at 1:40 PM with the headline "The shtick that carried Beto O’Rourke in 2018 is tiresome. This time, he’s winning at losing."