The Bierbauer Report

by Charles Bierbauer

[The Video Report] 

Oprah Winfrey stepped out of her pew Sunday—out of her comfort zone–and into Williams-Brice Stadium. Oprah uncomfortable in front of a crowd? Hard to imagine.

“This is the first time I’m stepping out of my pew because I’ve been inspired,” the doyen of television talk show hosts told the sun-baked crowd that had come to see her–many just from their own church pews–and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. “In the past, I’ve been disappointed by politicians.” Pointedly, she said she rarely has politicians on her show, because “I only have an hour.”

Oprah spoke for 18 minutes on Obama’s behalf, warming up the crowd for the candidate’s nearly 40-minute expanded stump speech. Michelle Obama took four minutes to introduce Oprah. It all wrapped up in a neat TV hour.

Of course, there’s much more to it than that. The campaign event, once announced, quickly outgrew the University of South Carolina’s 18,000-seat Colonial Center and was shifted to the 80,000-seat football stadium. People came from all over South Carolina and neighboring states.

Obama called it “the biggest crowd in the campaign. Period. Of any candidate.”

It probably was. Campaign aides said there were 29,000 on hand, filling perhaps a third of the stadium. That defies an old political maxim that says a small room filled looks better than a large venue two-thirds empty. But that wasn’t the point for the Obama campaign’s Iowa-South Carolina-New Hampshire Oprah road show.

“What’s inspiring is not just the size of the crowd, but the makeup of the crowd,” Obama said. It was young and old, white and black (probably 75 percent African-American), and made up of “Democrats, independents and, yes, even some Republicans.”

Political crowds typically have three components: the committed who are there to reinforce their beliefs, the uncertain who are looking for a candidate and the merely curious who may or may not make up their minds by election day. Sunday’s gathering added the admittedly star-struck.

An undecided voter from Walterboro said Oprah’s presence “somewhat” influenced his decision to come because “people follow her.”

Oprah did not make the same assumption, or at least did not admit it. “I know the difference between a book club and this seminal moment,” she said, referring to her ability to catapult a book to best-seller status with her endorsement.

I don’t endorse candidates here. But as an educator, communicator and former foreign correspondent, I can applaud the concerns Oprah raises as her own and ours.
Education: “We shake our heads because we can’t believe the quality of our schools.”
Communication: “We have a global knowledge economy.”
Foreign policy: “Our estrangement from the rest of the world–it does matter what the rest of the world thinks of us.”

These are questions for any candidate to address, not just Obama. He may not have the answers. But if it takes Oprah to get us out of our comfortable pews on those issues, as she has gotten her viewers to engage on many other matters, then perhaps it’s good that she was stirred and inspired.

Oprah’s endorsement of Obama is still unquantified. But she certainly commandeered one weekend in December for him, from wintry Iowa and New Hampshire to balmy South Carolina. Of all the candidates running for president, only Hillary Clinton can bring along a celebrity to match Oprah’s popularity. Bill Clinton. Maybe.

We’re getting close to the measurements that count. Watch the political polls over the next week to see if there’s an Oprah effect. Watch the early primaries, now just a month away, with Obama probably needing to win in Iowa and here in South Carolina to stop Hillary. Watch Oprah’s ratings on the outside chance there’s a backlash. She may have put more at risk than anyone by stepping off her studio set and out of her pew.

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Charles Bierbauer covered presidential campaigns for CNN from 1984 through 2000. He is dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, though the views here are his own and not those of the university. Bierbauer is senior contributing editor and a consultant to SCHotline.com.