{"id":4863,"date":"2026-07-13T11:33:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4863"},"modified":"2026-07-13T11:33:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:33:39","slug":"mcdreamy-for-senate-wasnt-hard-to-imagine-it-would-have-been-another-step-in-pop-cultures-political-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4863","title":{"rendered":"McDreamy for Senate wasn\u2019t hard to imagine. It would have been another step in pop culture\u2019s political takeover."},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Graham Platner bowed out of the Maine senatorial race amid further scandal, this time a sexual assault accusation, various names were floated as his replacement. Some of the ideas seemed natural enough, like the progressive former state senator Troy Jackson, who finished third in the Democratic primary for governor in June. There was also preliminary buzz around Boston College history professor and prolific Substacker Heather Cox Richardson.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more I feared the World Cup in Boston would let me down. It wasn\u2019t at all what I expected.<\/a><\/p>\n

But the name that really got tongues wagging was favorite Maine son Patrick Dempsey, the actor best known for playing Dr. Derek \u201cMcDreamy\u201d Shepherd on \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy.\u201d The star of a steamy nighttime soap opera? As a US senatorfrom the Pine Tree State? There was a time when the very notion would have seemed absurd. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But that time has passed, along with so many other political norms. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dempsey, 60, won\u2019t be running, as he explained in an eloquent op-ed in The Portland Press Herald. (Richardson isn\u2019t interested, either.) He\u2019ll continue his work in cancer care as founder of the Dempsey Center. \u201cI believe I can contribute more effectively through the life I\u2019ve already built,\u201d he wrote, though he added that he briefly considered entering the race. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dempsey, who started the Dempsey Center for cancer patients in response to his mother\u2019s battles with breast cancer and also helped raise funds for families of the Lewiston shooting victims, is a beloved figure in his native state. <\/span><\/p>\n

Had he entered, it wouldn\u2019t have come as a shock: Pop culture colonized electoral politics long ago. The prime example, of course, sits in the Oval Office, at least when he isn\u2019t playing golf. Donald Trump is a creation of television, most famously through the reality series \u201cThe Apprentice,\u201d on which he gained fame for snarling his catchphrase, \u201cYou\u2019re fired.\u201d Mentioned less often are his frequent guest spots on \u201cFox & Friends,\u201d where he yukked it up with the hosts and built a bond with the viewers who would become his political base. This is where Trump directly appealed to many of those who would eventually vote for him, and where he could bask in his bottomless narcissism. <\/span><\/p>\n

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On TV, you can build a brand that has little to do with policy, a potential plus in an era when distrust in government is common, a background in actual politics can be construed as a weakness, and seemingly everyone is surgically attached to their screens. Al Franken, who got his start on \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d rode his dry, progressive sense of humor to a Senate seat in Minnesota (though he was also a policy wonk). Earlier this year, reality TV star and Trump chum Spencer Pratt (of \u201cThe Hills\u201d) ran for mayor of Los Angeles; he was eliminated from the race after finishing third. The movies work pretty well, too. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the \u201cGovernator\u201d of California on the strength of his career as an action star of few words, promising fiscal if not social conservatism. <\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Photos: World Cup fever takes over Boston and the region in June and July<\/a><\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the big one, who turned his presence on movies and <\/i>television into a two-term presidency. Ronald Reagan went from B-movie actor (hard to believe the future union-buster was also a seven-term president of the Screen Actors Guild); to General Electric TV pitchman; to governor of California; to president of the United States. Somehow it seemed like a natural continuum. Reagan understood like no one before him how to talk to the camera, when to smile and nod, how to keep things punchy (\u201cMr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!\u201d). He spent his life playing roles; the presidency just happened to be his biggest. He knew intuitively what Richard Nixon learned only after hiring future Fox News head Roger Ailes to craft his image: how to communicate with the folks out there in TV Land.<\/span><\/p>\n

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For TV Land is not reality. It\u2019s a fantasy world where an upstart presidential candidate named Bill Clinton can don shades, pick up a sax, and bleat out an Elvis Presley tune on \u201cThe Arsenio Hall Show,\u201d just to show how cool he can be. Or two-term president Barack Obama can produce (and appear as himself on) HBO\u2019s new Larry David sketch comedy series \u201cLife, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

In the sharp-fanged 1957 satire \u201cA Face in the Crowd,\u201d the egomaniacal country boy Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith) uses his aw-shucks charm and TV profile to rebrand an oligarchical presidential candidate as an everyman. It\u2019s an ever-relevant movie, with one key caveat: Today, the candidates don\u2019t need an onscreen surrogate. They can smile or snarl for the cameras all on their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the world Dempsey chose not to enter. He\u2019s still acting; in the recent Fox series \u201cMemory of a Killer,\u201d he plays a hitman suffering from early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s. In his op-ed he issued a plea for those seeking office to \u201clead with humility.\u201d Definitely not spoken like a politician. <\/span><\/p>\n

Read more July Fourth has passed, but the Trump-centric 250th birthday celebrations aren\u2019t over yet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Dempsey won\u2019t be running for the Maine Senate seat Graham Platner wanted. But had he entered the race, it wouldn\u2019t have come as a shock: Pop culture colonized electoral politics long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nMcDreamy for Senate wasn\u2019t hard to imagine. 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