Obama: The Woody Boyd Candidate

Earlier this year, I rented and re-watched the entire series run of Cheers. Towards the end of the series, the hayseed junior bartender Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson) decides to run for city council. He is encouraged in this endeavor by psychiatrist Fraser Crane (Kelsey Grammer), the bar’s resident elite, who acts as Woody’s campaign manager.

Fraser masterminds Woody’s campaign as a social experiment: He is convinced that anyone, even a bumpkin, can get elected, simply by spouting vague cliches. His advice to Woody? Don’t be specific on the campaign trail – just repeat empty slogans like “change.”

When I saw this, I burst out laughing – perhaps this is where Axelrod & Co. received their inspiration for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign theme, I surmised.

In the show, Fraser’s guess proves accurate. Woody is elected. But in the aftermath of Woody’s victory, Fraser has a terrible foreboding of the future – Woody’s election to city council begins a long climb up the cursus honorum, and he eventually becomes president of the United States. Because Woody is stupid (in Fraser’s mind), this of course leads to a nuclear holocaust.

“Thanks Dr. Crane. I couldn’t have done it without you,” Woody tells Fraser at his victory party. “No one can prove that,” the psychiatrist responds, shaken by his vision.

But of course, avid Cheers viewers know Woody to be far from brainless. For instance, there was the time when owner-bartender Sam (Ted Danson) tried to cheat Woody out of an agreed upon raise – Woody sees through the ruse. Or the time Woody snookered a group of firemen out of their Dalmatian. And on and on.

Sure, Woody was sweet. Kind. Honest. But stupid? No way.

But to Fraser, Indiana-born Woody was clearly an idiot. Fraser, being a Harvard educated, Eastern seaboard-dwelling intellectual, naturally shared the prejudices of his breed; that anyone from fly-over country must be mentally deficient.

For my own part, if we had a Woody Boyd for president, I would sleep soundly. It is men like Fraser Crane, with their smug airs of moral and intellectual superiority, who think they know all and think they especially know what is best for others, who frighten me. It is rulers like that who bring ruin and call it “reform.”

Barack Obama may have campaigned like Woody Boyd. But he governs like a Fraser Crane. God help us.