There’s one real star of the Vanity Fair profile of Beto O’Rourke, and it’s not the Texas politician.
The failed Senate candidate announced he’s running for president Thursday morning, and just in time, the magazine profiled him in a glowing cover story.
Luckily, the piece does acknowledge his drunk driving arrest, which other media outlets have conveniently overlooked in the past, but that doesn’t make it levelheaded. Near the end of the piece, the author writes:
"O’Rourke can appear almost too innocent to be a politician—too decent, too wholesome, the very reason he became popular also the same reason he could be crucified on the national stage."The politician with a crony capitalist background is certainly not too decent for the White House, but he has a dog who is.
The real star of the story is O’Rourke’s dog Artemis, who doesn’t even get a mention in the 8,000-word profile but who had plenty of photos taken by Annie Leibovitz.
Getting the legendary portrait photographer to capture O’Rourke may have been a little bit much, but Leibovitz's talents were necessary to capture this pooch. She — since the dog is named after the goddess of the hunt, I’m guessing it’s a she — is looking at the ground while O’Rourke plays music with his kids. She’s looking off into the middle distance with the family at Franklin Mountains State Park. And as O’Rourke and his son sit on the couch, she’s staring right into the camera, and also into the soul of America.
O’Rourke said this next election is the “fight of our lives” and he’s “born to be in it.” But, despite polling among the top 2020 contenders since his Senate loss last fall, he’s shown little evidence he has what it takes. If charisma and Twitter fawning are all it takes to win the presidency, Artemis may as well run instead.
