The Empty Vessel of Matthew McConaughey

Don’t bother burning any precious mental energy trying to figure out why every election cycle, several performers and celebrities like Matthew McConaughey flirt with running for political office—and sometimes even make good on the tease. Having spent most of his professional life pleasing fans, your average performer yearns for their continued adulation, and there is no more reliable path to that destination than going on the hustings where your speeches are punctuated every three minutes with the whoops and hollers of a raucous crowd. Was the Kanye West for president campaign in 2020 for the votes, or the voter validation? (I think you know.)

When McConaughey—who is so politically tuned out he hasn’t voted in a primary since at least 2012, as the Texas Tribune reports, and has never contributed to any Texas or federal contest—told a podcaster last month that a run for Texas governor was “a true consideration,” he was merely the latest in a long line of performers-turned-candidate to open his arms to voter love. His run may look like a lark, but Texas voters aren’t taking it that way: A new Dallas Morning News pollshows that 45 percent of the state’s registered voters would vote for McConaughey vs. 33 percent for its incumbent governor, Greg Abbott.

But exactly what is this Morning News poll measuring? Surely not approval of McConaughey’s political positions, which are so vague that nobody can even tell what party flag he’d run under. The star of Dallas Buyers Club, Interstellar, Mud, and The Lincoln Lawyer is a politically ambidextrous character, against gun violence but also against the “illiberal left.” He’s posed for photo-ops with Democrats like Beto O’Rourke, but done the same with Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. He’s for police “reform” but against defunding the police. In his recent memoir, he writes of coming “from a long line of rule breakers” and “outlaw libertarians,” which makes for a good stand-in for the way many Texans view themselves, but is suspiciously lacking in political content. So far, McConaughey has provided voters with nothing more than a blank canvas as wide as a Texas prairie sunset on which they can paint their own political hopes and dreams.

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