PJ Media

I don’t know how many people are willing to admit this on a political site, but I’ve been a wrestling fan for years and I knew quite a bit about Linda McMahon long before she entered politics.

First of all, you can’t argue her success in business. The product in the ring was all due to her husband Vince. Linda, as CEO, got the non-glamour part of the WWF/WWE. It was Linda that handled the marketing. Linda was the one counting beans while her husband was in front of the camera. Vince McMahon developed Wrestlemania and other PPV events which are still the most lucrative PPVs in the business. Linda was the one who worked out the contracts and brought the money home. The wrestling business has always been an industry where women could hold high responsible positions while their husbands put on the show. The WWF/WWE’s sucess has been due to Vince McMahon’s showmanship, but the McMahons are worth hundreds of millions of dollars today because of Linda.

On the downside, when I first heard that a McMahon was entering politics I thought to myself that when it came to charisma and working a crowd, they couldn’t have made a worse choice. Vince, as well as the McMahon children Shane and Stephanie, all had the ability to engage a crowd and make them cheer or boo on demand. Linda is terrible at this. Rightly or wrongly, this is an important part of beinng a politician. Linda is seriously lacking in the charisma department.

McMahon’s supporters will point to her lack of political experience as an asset. Although I understand the appeal of a non-politician politician, I often wonder how many voters would choose a brain surgeon based on the idea that they wanted their surgery done by someone who had no surgical experience. Linda’s political instincts have been a bit lacking. The worst mistake she has made that I know of was sending out a mailing calling for more deeep water oil drilling while BP’s oil rig was spewing out millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico. Never mind the issue itself (that’s a whole other debate), the timing could not be worse. Linda has moved considerably to the right during the primary and has already made declarations she does not actually believe to win over conservative Republicans. Will she be able to defend her primary statements and still win enough support to get elected in a fairly liberal state? That is going to require a lot more political skill than Linda McMahon has. She might be able to buy enough experts with political skills to pull it off, but she’s at a serious disadvantage because she knows very little about politics. McMahon has rarely even voted. The fact that a major corporation like the WWE often gives donations to both parties is not going to help her keep her conservative base happy either.

Personally, I don’t think Ms. McMahon would be a bad senator. I’m not sure she’d be a good one, but she probably wouldn’t make Washington worse by being there. But I have serious doubts about her ability to get elected in the first place.

A final observation. Although the press and the Democrats are having a lot of fun with the whole “rasslin” aspect of Linda McMahon, at least she’s no Jesse Ventura!