Virginia Postrel, Columnist

Oprah Is the Living Symbol America Needs Now

Forget the presidency -- she'd be a terrific head of state. And the job is open.

January 8, 2018 at 8:41 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

Filling the void.
Photographer: Trae Patton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

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Forget Oprah Winfrey for president -- for all the reasons cited by my Bloomberg View colleague Jonathan Bernstein. We don’t need another political newbie in the Oval Office. But the response to her eloquent Golden Globes speech demonstrates a craving, and not just on the left, for skills she’s already mastered.

She knows how to represent the country in a unifying and inspirational way. Note the numerous shoutouts to men, from Sidney Poitier to TV executive Dennis Swanson to “some pretty phenomenal men,” in a speech that could easily have become male-bashing.