Esquire: Stop Being Such a Celeb, Mr. President

Obama's election one year ago may have been as much a popularity contest as a political one. But has he governed too much by image — the Megan Fox of the White House, as it were — to claim any real change on another November 4? Part three of a week-long series on America since Grant Park.

Despite its best intentions as it flocked to the polls a year ago today, America did not exactly elect Barack Obama to serve as its forty-fourth President of the United States. It didn't call upon him to lead, necessarily, nor simply to represent the country's interests at home and abroad. Obama's victory over John McCain was not that of a man whose sheer sense of principal outweighed his opponent's politics or the Establishment's status quo, nor whose trademark invocations of hope and affirmation had influenced voters to truly, sincerely believe that "Yes we can."

No, the American electorate did not cohere in support a civic firebrand. Rather, it purposely, deliberately coronated its first-ever Superstar-in-Chief. Forget Ronald Reagan, who was more than a generation removed from Bedtime For Bonzo when he snake-charmed his Silent Majority three decades ago. In 2008, pop culture finally sought — and won — the presidency.