Talk of Oprah running for president in 2020 is anthony bourdain cause of death auto-eroticismratcheting up, thanks to her powerful speech at the Golden Globes. Of course, that means the inevitable backlash is here too.

But if the media mogul has the fire in the belly required to run for president, she should run -- and nothing anyone writes should dissuade her.

If she is truly prepared for the thankless slog of the Democratic primary process — endless corn dogs at Iowa cookouts, walking from house to house through the freezing slush of New Hampshire in January, being grilled with gotcha questions on foreign policy by newspaper boards and talk radio hosts coast to coast — then she's ready.

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If she runs, the veil of celebrity will be lifted. Nothing can protect her from oppo research — everything she's ever said on every TV show over the years can and will be used out of context in attack ads, every crackpot health theory she has ever entertained on screen or in print will be used against her.

If she gets all that in her gut and it doesn't faze her, if she's happy to give up her life as she knows it, then no obstacle remains. Her rags-to-billions resume is more impressive than the current president's, her speechmaking more inspiring, her common touch more genuine, her claim on this moment in history more legitimate. He was a heavily edited reality TV star; she has been far less filtered and has always sought to raise the level of discourse.

But here's one more gut check Oprah needs to consider: The presidency is not the powerful office many believe it to be. It is, in many senses, a trap. No matter what legislation she cares about enacting — Medicare for all, a $15 national minimum wage, comprehensive immigration reform — she can almost certainly be a lot more effective outside the White House than in it.

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The president is constitutionally weak, as Trump is finding out to his chagrin. Notwithstanding the vast post-1945 national security apparatus that grew up around the executive branch, it's hard to get much done by fiat. America's founders intended this.

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In practical terms, the role is about endless rounds of federal and judicial appointments squeezed between endless meetings. I have no doubt Oprah would listen to the wisdom of counsel; then again, she did promote the problematic Dr. Oz, half of whose medical claims are flat-out wrong.

The nature of the trap is pretty clear. It isn't just the suffocating constriction of Secret Service protection — Bill Clinton once half-jokingly called the Oval Office the "crown jewel of the Federal penal system" — it's the fact that once you're in the office, the pendulum soon swings against you.

Rightly or wrongly, and mostly wrongly, you and your party are seen as responsible for every ill to befall the nation. And if there aren't that many real ills, the opposition is perfectly prepared to hype up some imaginary ones. Remember the ebola scare just prior to the 2014 midterm elections?

The last four presidents — Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump — were all billed as outsider candidates. Each one had a lighter political resume than his predecessor. That didn't matter. Each one lost (or in Trump's case, looks very likely to lose) total control of Congress in a midterm election; each one fell victim to the rallying cry of "throw the bums out."

Once you defeat the swamp, you become the swamp. That helps explain why even a preening narcissist like Trump reportedly didn't want to win the election. He just wanted to get close enough to claim he was robbed and then set up a grievance-filled cable news channel.

Now picture this: Oprah as the head of a supremely powerful PAC. Imagine if she cared enough about a single political issue — Medicare for All, say — to campaign for it for as long as it takes. Not to run for office, but to expend all her energy on pressuring office holders into enacting legislation, and throwing out the ones that don't.

She could fill stadiums with star-studded salutes to single-payer healthcare. She could explain the issues involved to the electorate in a highly accessible way; she could keep our eyes focused on the prize. Democratic politicians, and maybe even a few Republicans, would be lining up to introduce Oprah-backed bills.

Those billions of dollars in free media that helped Trump eke out a win in 2016? They'd be nothing compared to what Oprah could get as a stadium-filling, issue-pushing kingmaker. Let CNN see what kind of audience numbers it could get filling the screen with herempty podium.

The time is ripe for a truly transformational political figure with a gift like Oprah's — but one who floats above the machine rather than in it. If she really wants to get stuff done, there's no limit on how far she can go ... just so long as she leaves the temptations of the Iowa state fair to more pedestrian retail politicians.

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