C HAPTER F IVE Vote for Me: Playing at Politics VALENTINA CARDO AND JOHN STREET Introduction n the run-up to the 2005 General Election, one of the United Kingdom’s main television channels broadcast, over the course of a week, a program called Vote for Me. It was a political version of reality television shows such as Big Brother, Pop Idol, and Fame Academy. Contestants were required to play at being politicians, just as their equivalents in other shows played at being pop stars. The prize was the opportunity to stand in the General Election. Vote for Me was not the first of its kind. In the United States, a cable com- pany had launched American Candidate in the hope of finding, according to one television executive, “a Detroit plumber who tells it like it is.” And in Argentina in 2002, there was The People’s Candidate, the winner of which was to stand for Congress (van Zoonen 2005). This chapter discusses the rise of such television shows, ones that deliber- ately blur the distinction between politics and entertainment, creating a new crossover genre. It briefly traces their rise, putting them into the broader context of shifts in the businesses of both politics and television. Its main concern, however, is with the arguments that are used to justify programs like Vote for Me. There are three such arguments in particular. The first is that these programs provide a “public service,” enabling viewers to engage with democratic politics. The format of the program, it is implied, gives viewers access to politics. The second argument is that of populism. The suggestion is that by allowing viewers to participate directly in the selection of candidates, the program avoids the elitist and distorting effects of party involvement. And the third justifying argument is that in allowing citizen-viewers to engage in this way, the program helps to address the perceived “crisis” in democracy. The Argentinean experiment, for example, was presented as an attempt to re- I