The Academy Awards of Politics

Did you watch the Oscars? I was at a friend’s home playing cards with my monthly group of bid whist players. This month we decided to have a different kind of fun and dressed like one of the characters. Since my name is Norma Jean my friends encouraged me to dress as Marilyn Monroe. So I did.

I showed up in one of my mother’s gowns, did my makeup like Marilyn including the mole on the face and even put on a blonde wig. As a matter of fact I won the award as the best costume although when I looked in the mirror I didn’t recognize Marilyn or myself.

As I watched the awards my mind drifted to the presidential campaign. I’m not aware of an academy award type celebration for political candidates so I pondered what that would look like. I examined the list of 24 award categories that are presented and considered whether any of these awards would fit our current candidates.

I found a few that were relevant then I looked at them through the eyes of authenticity. I am an authority on public speaking and finding your authentic voice, so I’m beginning to look at these political candidates in this light. I created my own awards based on the authenticity of the candidates. Here’s my take:

Best Screenplay Adaptation - Mitt Romney gets this award for his skill at attempting to adapt his personality and voice to the interests of the voters. Romney adapts the screen play not just to play to voters. He changes the script to appease Super Pac supporters, middle class America, women, his hometown, even it seems…his principles.

Best Animated Short Film – Speaker Newt Gingrich for the passionately animated way he expresses himself. He’s the most animated of all the candidates. You can always count on his passion although you might not have a clue what he’s going to say. 

Best Documentary Feature - Ron Paul who keeps you thinking and keeps the story going. 

Because he is great researcher his story is a great documentary. There is consistency in values, beliefs and integrity.

Best Film Editing - Rick Santorum for his skill at extracting edits to meet personal views. Santorum has great skill at taking universal concepts and extracting the part that meets his personal views then imposing his belief system on all of us.

Best Original Story – President Barack Obama for his success at utilizing innovative practices to claim presidential success. As the first president to win through social media campaigning he has created an original way to keep the conversation going.

And one final award:

Best Display of Authenticity

I selected this topic because I am America’s Leading Authentic Voice Doctor® and an authority on assessing authenticity in people and organizations. When I apply the concepts of authenticity to the political candidates I’m actually surprised at what I discovered because the winner is: Rick Santorum.

The reason I selected Santorum is because he has such an authentic way of sharing his beliefs. His message is consistent and unmistakable. While we may not agree with his belief system he is steadfast in it, one of the tenets of authenticity. What you see is what you get and that too is authenticity. Only thing is that it doesn’t resonate authentically with so many people. Even though he wins the Best Display of Authenticity award, Santorum may not be the authentic solution in this election.

Presidential candidates often have script writers to write, edit and research their script. But as the populace we generally don’t have that luxury. So who is writing your script?