# Jon Stewart for president **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 9, 2022, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669 "2022-07-09T15:59:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/41 "2022-07-10T01:38:56Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > Give that man a bully pulpit and he will embarrass Congress into functioning, which is way more than it’s doing right now. They’d need to have a sense of shame for that to work. I haven’t noticed one. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/42 "2022-07-10T01:45:30Z")
I love Stewart, but he’s smart not to run. I’d fully expect that some fact in his past would be twisted and distorted into a scandal. Politics is really ugly, and there would be teams dedicated to creating reasons for others to hate him. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/43 "2022-07-10T01:45:54Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > This is just talk. Does he want to run? No. Of course it’s speculation and he currently hasn’t made any declarations of running, but that shouldn’t discount that there’s not an unreasonable likelihood that such a thing could easily happen, and to envision the means with which he could take the horns. > [@Acsenray](#): > > He has never committed himself to the idea of _being a Democrat_. Unless he does that, he isn’t going to be nominated. I can’t imagine him running Independent (and two quatloos not that _other one_), so yeah I’ll go with D. if he choses to get in the ring. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/44 "2022-07-10T01:49:59Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > Give that man a bully pulpit and he will embarrass Congress into functioning Just out of curiosity, can you give one example of that since the Civil Rights Act of 1965? Cause I can’t think of one. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/45 "2022-07-10T01:50:40Z")
> [@Guest-starring\_Id](#): > > I can’t imagine him running Independent (and two quatloos not that _other one_), so yeah I’ll go with D. if he choses to get in the ring. The point isn’t what party you would guess he would choose if he were to run. But in all his decades of discussing poilitics, he has never, ever admitted to being on a side. He will make fun of people. He might express an opinion on certain—pointedly nonpartisan—issues. But if you’re going to run for office, you have to choose a side, and throughout his public life, he has always harsly bristled at any attempt to elicit an admission of being on a side. It’s part of his personality. I don’t think he can do it. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/46 "2022-07-10T01:58:31Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > …throughout his public life, he has always harsly bristled at any attempt to elicit an admission of being on a side. I’ve had a different impression - of him being on the left. He’s always skewered nonsense from the right far more so than from the left. I don’t think it’s a matter of guess work, at all, about which party he’d chose to run with. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/47 "2022-07-10T02:20:15Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > 36 years in the Senate + 8 in the West Wing hasn’t seemed to have benefitted Biden in that regard. I mean, I don’t think he’s terrible, but the guy with no political experience before him seems to have gotten more accomplished politically and culturally (to the detriment of our country obviously) than he has so far. No, Trump was a failure as a President, even by his own standards. He failed to accomplish most of the things he promised he would do when he was campaigning in 2016. Trump was great at telling people he was a success. But he wasn’t very good at actually succeeding. The problem is there are a lot of people who just look at the President and say “Well, he looks like he’s doing a good job so I guess he must be.” ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/48 "2022-07-10T02:50:37Z")
I like Jon Stewart a lot. I enjoyed him on _The Daily Show,_ think he’s wicked smart and am confident that he knows and understands American politics. I respect the hell out of him for all he’s done for 9-11 first responders. But despite that very interesting article, I’m not at all convinced that he has either the skillset or the temperament to be an effective President. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/49 "2022-07-10T03:06:02Z")
What skillset is required? It’s worth noting that the FFs specified the requirements to be president and none were a skill. They could have included a requirement to have some legislative background or something else but they didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/50 "2022-07-10T03:11:24Z")
C-Span would become the #1 watched channel in the country. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/51 "2022-07-10T03:18:41Z")
Has Jon Stewart ever been president? Then no, you wouldn’t have seen an example of him embarrassing Congress into functioning. Not sure what kind of gotcha-ya you imagined you had going on here but, well, you do you. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/52 "2022-07-10T03:45:07Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > What skillset is required? I endorse this question. I don’t think any specific technical competence in “how to run a country” is required, what’s important is to be a good enough judge of people to surround yourself with the most competent advisors and listen to them. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/53 "2022-07-10T03:53:40Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > throughout his public life, he has always harsly bristled at any attempt to elicit an admission of being on a side. It’s part of his personality. It’s not part of his personality, it was part of his job as an entertainer when his show was on the air. He publically declared his support for Biden in 2020. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/54 "2022-07-10T03:53:54Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > > [@k9bfriender](#): > > > > He was _very_ adamant that this is _what_ happened. ⁢ > > Fair enough, I didn’t watch it. That makes him poorly informed on the issue, since we obviously don’t have definitive evidence either way. But not in the same category as a conspiracy theorist. ⁢ I can see arguing that it’s not as bad as the moon hoax stuff, but it’s definitely the same category. It requires believing that there is this secret that THEY aren’t telling us, but that you are so special you figured it out. It requires ignoring the actual experts and scientists, who have repeatedly from the beginning said how unlikely that was. And I definitely think it would hurt him in an election, too. Much of the public (on the pro-vax side, of course) has a lot of resentment built up over COVID-19 misinformation. The only way I’d expect him to weather it would be to preemptively disavow it. It doesn’t make me hate him. People can have blindspots. But I do think it would be a problem in a presidential candidate. Though, of course, the bigger problem is that he has no desire to run and has always said that. (It’s why I expected this to be an old thread.) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/55 "2022-07-10T03:55:01Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > Has Jon Stewart ever been president? Then no, you wouldn’t have seen an example of him embarrassing Congress into functioning. Not sure what kind of gotcha-ya you imagined you had going on here but, well, you do you. ⁢ Surely the answer would be the 9/11 First Responders bill? He had to embarrass them into passing that. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/56 "2022-07-10T04:00:26Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I can see arguing that it’s not as bad as the moon hoax stuff, but it’s definitely the same category. It requires believing that there is this secret that THEY aren’t telling us, but that you are so special you figured it out. It requires ignoring the actual experts and scientists, who have repeatedly from the beginning said how unlikely that was. We have a long thread on this, and this is just not true. Some conspiracy to deliberately develop a bioweapon, yes that’s nonsense. But to conflate that with plausible connections to the lab is a mistake. There is a perfectly plausible possibility that one of the researchers associated with the lab contracted the first case when collecting samples in the field and unwittingly brought it back to Wuhan. This requires no conspiracy, the Chinese themselves may not even know for sure if this happened, but it explains the otherwise improbable coincidence of the proximity of the first outbreak to the lab. To _dismiss_ the proximity to the lab as coincidence is to dismiss significant circumstantial evidence when we have no direct evidence for any other path either. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/57 "2022-07-10T05:06:41Z")
No suggestions yet on his running mate. How about he buries the hatchet with Seth Macfarlane? ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/58 "2022-07-10T05:26:01Z")
How about: > [@Win\_Place\_Show](#): > > …my other favorite (Katie Porter) She’s numero uno with me. Rob Cordrry? ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/59 "2022-07-10T10:46:43Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > I’d fully expect that some fact in his past would be twisted and distorted into a scandal. He’s Jewish and a liberal. They would just amplify those into “scandals.” ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2022, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669/60 "2022-07-10T13:31:23Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > He’s Jewish and a liberal. They would just amplify those into “scandals.”… “Amplify” is a rather generous word for people who rant about Jewish Space Lasers and cannibalistic pedophiles running their global conspiracy from the basement of a pizza parlor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jon-stewart-for-president/967669.md?page=4)