MANSFIELD: Oprah, Quit Being So Selfish

Oprah Winfrey, as is her right, is downplaying any interest in a presidential run by saying she doesn’t “have the DNA” for such a bid. But what if George Washington, or Lincoln, or Roosevelt had said the same thing when their country needed them? Where would we be as a republic? Perhaps still a colony of England if Washington had not stepped up. My people would still be in chains if Lincoln had not become the standard bearer. And virtually everyone in the country would be as poor as church mice if a man in a wheelchair had not risen to the occasion during the height of the Great Depression.

I submit that the country could very well be in similar dire straits if someone doesn’t step up to beat Trump in the next election.

Citizenship sometimes requires sacrifice. That’s the price sometime to be paid to live in America. And while I can completely understand why Oprah (or any one else who doesn’t thirst for power over the lives of others) wouldn’t want the job, I still think she misses the point. She has an obligation here. She wouldn’t have to do the job, just do her part to help capture the office of the presidency.

And to do so she need not run for president. In point of fact, she’d be much more of service to her country if she ran for vice president. Simply lending her name to the ticket would greatly enhance chances of success.

In fact, if Oprah were to run for president, she probably would lose. We’re still one of the more misogynistic nations on the face of the earth. And quite as it’s kept, white females are among the biggest haters when it comes to a woman running for president, and this would be her base. They are followed by black church-going males, who believe that women should simply be subservient to them and their outsized egos.

But, as vice president, Oprah wouldn’t have much of anything to do (unless she so desired), but her star power would help capture the office for whomever she elected to support for the top spot on the ticket. Now some will say that Oprah’s ego is too big to run as vice president, but if she doesn’t really want to get into politics anyway, what difference does it make, ego-wise?

All she would be doing is — in the tradition of other great Americans — making a sacrifice for the good of the Republic and this is not too much for the citizenry to ask of any patriot.

From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.

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