The Case for Taylor Swift's Presidency

Only one person can replace Biden 4 months from the election – and win

hear me out

For over a year now — much to the chagrin of my wife — I’ve advocated for nominating Taylor Swift to be the next president of the United States.

This suggestion has usually been met with eye-rolling. That has changed recently.

At this particular moment, I think it is worth shouting this idea from the rooftops.

Why? Well, Democrats across the country are calling for replacing Joe Biden as the presidential candidate, because he irrepressibly lacks the capacity to remain president.

There are many problems with this proposal, but chief among them is: who can they replace him with that would win?

This is where things get dicey. We are 4 months out from the presidential election. The time to replace him would have been at least a year ago, not now.

Yet, there seems to hardly be any other choice. If Democrats don’t replace him, and they somehow win, it will be a pyrrhic victory. If they keep him and lose, it would have been viewed as an obvious blunder in hindsight.

At the same time, you can’t really keep him, because it requires gaslighting everyone about his mental state being fine, and that’s no longer working.

But the replacement needs to be someone who could obviously win. Everyone says “anybody else would be better” than the options available, but what’s needed is someone who, if chosen, would turn out enough voters for them, rather than against the other person.

So, who would be the option? I would argue that there’s only one, and that one is Taylor Swift.

The reason is clear. To replace your front-running presidential candidate 4 months before the election and win requires two critical factors:

1. Branding: The chosen candidate comes with their own branding. There is no time left to pick a new candidate and build up their name, so the candidate must already be known.

2. Popularity: The new nominee must already be popular and widely liked.

Can we think of any candidates who fit both of these brackets?

Hardly any current politician does. Kamala Harris has branding, but is not widely popular. Gavin Newsom has even less recognition and branding, which is a prerequisite to becoming popular in the first place.

Replacing Biden with either of these candidates would be a 4 month mad dash to either improve the candidate’s recognition, or improve their popularity. Picking a candidate that requires either is an extreme risk at this juncture. Therefore, selecting a candidate without these risks is the only responsible option.

Let’s look at some numbers supporting Swift:

1. Over 20% of 2020 Biden voters would vote for a Republican if Taylor Swift endorsed a Republican

2. Over 16% of 2020 Trump voters would vote for a Democrat endorsed by Swift

3. 1/3rd of people age 18-24 would vote for someone if Swift endorsed them

4. Over 39% of Americans have a favorable view of Swift; only 13% have an unfavorable view – 75% of people with an opinion of her have a positive one

5. In a 2023 poll, Swift polled at 7% against Biden and Trump – Notable for someone that wasn’t even running and would certainly poll even higher now

But what about qualifications?

When I bring up a Swift presidency, people will sometimes bash on Swift; some don’t think she’d be a good politician, or that she is inexperienced, or unintelligent, but when you evaluate her on the merits, it’s difficult to find this to be true. Let’s look at some aspects:

Self-Made Billionaire

Swift isn’t just a popular artist. She is an immensely successful self-made billionaire. There are hundreds of famous, extremely popular musicians in the world. The amount who attain a net worth in the multi-millions is few. The number of musicians who become billionaires can be counted on one hand.

There is only one musician on Earth who became a billionaire solely from revenue through their music, song licensing, and concert touring, and not from selling additional products launched off their name-brand recognition. This unrivaled, prototypical, solitarily successful musician is Taylor Swift.

It is a dream of most musicians to have financial independence solely through their artistic works. To reach billionaire status by these means is, in essence, nearly unfathomable. In light of this, it’s worth appreciating the business-savvy and cunning required of Swift to navigate to this position.

Major Positive International Influence and Reception

Underrated in modernity is just how important the U.S. president is in international affairs. Most Americans have felt a twinge of embarrassment watching our presidents go and represent us in other countries. And yet, it is forgotten that the world erupted in celebration when Obama won the presidency in 2008!

When he traveled abroad – at least at first – large crowds were excited to see him. He was a young, smart, handsome representation of America.

There is no question Swift would experience this on 10x the scale. Her Eras tour that she has been performing globally is completely sold out, packing each stadium with at least 70,000 people. Her popularity, and impact, is unmatched for an American.

The Prime Minister of Singapore greatly upset neighboring nations when he revealed he created an exclusive deal with Taylor Swift for Singapore to be the only Southeast Asian nation she performs in. Leaders from neighboring countries were dismayed they’d miss out on the tourism boom.

The impact from Swift’s visits (known as Swiftonomics) shouldn’t be understated. Even the Bank of England has decided to hold off on cutting interest rates due to the economic boom expected from her upcoming concerts in the UK.

Swift has popularity and clout among world leaders already as well. Aside from Singapore’s prime minister cutting backroom deals with her, the Prime Minister of Australia speaks often about her and has admitted to being a Swiftie. The current and last prime minsters of the U.K. seem to be fans. The president of Chile is a self-admitted Swiftie that strongly wants her to hold a concert there. The Prime Minister of a Sweden is a Swiftie. The Prime Minister of Canada begged Swift using her own lyrics to come tour in Canada.

Even more interestingly, authoritarian dictators have historically had a penchant for America’s stars. Saddam Hussein enjoyed Sinatra, Gaddafi liked Beyoncé, Kim Jong-Un admired Michael Jackson, Putin is a fan of Elvis. It’s very likely that a Swift presidency could bridge some bad blood.

Needless to say, Swift would be coming into the presidency with a very warm, very familiar international welcome.

A History of Political Involvement

Unlike many musicians, and even many politicians, Swift has a Wikipedia page dedicated solely to her political impact that is roughly equivalent to 15 pages long when printed. (there’s also a page dedicated to her cultural impact that is roughly 30 pages printed).

Despite knowing she’d face a lot of blowback, she switched her stance from apolitical to openly advocating for women’s and LGBT rights. She campaigned heavily for democratic candidates such as Biden. Despite this, she continues to retain appeal to her fans across political parties and among independents.

More recently, she catalyzed anti-scalping legislation across the country to force TicketMaster to disclose full ticket fees and prevent scalping in several states — in a series of bills known as “Taylor Swift Bills”.

She also worked hard in 2020 to get hundreds of thousands of young people – democratically leaning – to register to vote.

It’s noteworthy here that Swift hasn’t shied away from politics. Many celebrities would only engage with it on a shallow, commentary level. Swift has effectuated more significant political impact and changes to law than many political activists do from a lifetime of work.

In this way, Swift demonstrates keen political instincts of the unique position she holds, and uses it discerningly – seemingly aware of when, and when not to use her sway.

More progressive activists actually detest this restrained aspect of her, but I believe it demonstrates a public instinct many politically-poisoned activists lack:

1. If you become loud about every single issue, your influence simply becomes background noise to a public already bombarded by noise about every issue in general

2. If you take strong stances on issues you don’t have perfect knowledge and background on, you are liable to look dumb, misinformed, and quick to jump to conclusions as more information comes out. This is difficult to recover from.

These are characteristics of someone who wouldn’t kowtow to the more extreme ends of either party, willing to uphold a useful pragmatism over short-termed idealism.

Unifying, Charismatic, Un-polarizing Figure

From the numbers, we can see Swift has broad cross-party, cross-age, and cross-gender demographic appeal. There is hardly another individual with so much general appeal.

But why is this important? For one, the country will be in a state of absolute tumult. Something Biden had set out to do in his presidency was unify the country; to get everyone to “come together”.

It seems like people didn’t so much as come together as simply become completely dejected by politics in general. The whole thing has started to look like a farce.

Part of the reason behind this is that Biden lacked charisma. He was no JFK, or even a Reagan, capable of meeting the oration demands of the moment.

With the tumult of a last-second nominee swap, it is paramount that the DNC would select someone representing a pinnacle of personal charisma; lest the country divide itself into even more chaos.

In fact, if they select someone that does not meet these requirements and they still somehow win the election, the legitimacy of it will be significantly challenged.

Has an Internal Moral Compass

Perhaps one of the most important skills of a national leader is to have a sense of moral clarity, such that they are willing to defy their closest counsel for what they believe is right.

In the 2018 midterm elections, Swift’s family urged her to refrain from publicly taking a stand in an electoral race. The reasoning was straightforward: she’d potentially hurt her career by dividing her fanbase, and she’d be putting her physical safety at risk from people who now hate her or view her as a threat.

And yet she was willing to go against this counsel and come out swinging politically anyway. That is a characteristic trait of a leader!

Will this happen?

It could. The Democratic party can still select someone else at the national convention which was supposed to be August 19th, but they have just moved up to August 7th.

And Swift will be 35 by this election’s inauguration day, which is the only age requirement. Of course, Swift must agree to this whole idea as well – being president is less a glamorous task, and more like serving the country.

But sometimes, duty calls, and when one party nominates their charismatic movie-star billionaire president, you respond with an even more charismatic rock-star movie-star billionaire future president.

This probably won’t happen though, unless we all get this idea circulating in front of everyone in the country within the next month.

But it needed to be put out there. It’s one of those ideas out of left field that needs to be considered in light of the current turmoil, and that, frankly, would be extremely entertaining to hyperstition into reality. At the very least, it would be a little irresponsible of America’s political leaders to not consider it at all. And if they lose, they may very well wish they had.