“He was just looking for a little exposure,” an Associated Press reporter punned in a 1999 article on the appearance in Lafayette, Louisiana, of a twenty-eight-year-old man singing on the sidewalk wearing only a guitar, a Stetson, and his tighty-whities.1 Easy pun though it was to pluck, looking for a little exposure did indeed foretell what made the Naked Cowboy’s 2012 candidacy for president significant.
After announcing his candidacy, the press clamored for the low-hanging fruit of such puns. “‘Naked Cowboy’ Briefs Public on His Presidential Bid” headlined the account in Elyria, Ohio’s Chronicle Telegram. “Times Square Cowboy Has Naked Ambition: Presidency” was the pun of choice for Johnstown, Pennsylvania’s Tribune Democrat. New York’s Daily News told readers, “Reporters pelted the Naked Cowboy with questions such as will he endorse Fruit of the Loom or Hanes?” Among the more esoteric bons mots, New York’s Village Voice simply noted the Naked Cowboy’s performance attire, then transitioned to his political views with “beneath that exterior.”2 Touché.
You can imagine the views Naked Cowboy expressed in announcing his candidacy in Times Square, where for over a decade he’d been a tourist attraction. But you’re probably imagining wrong. He declared his support for sealing our borders more securely to keep out illegal immigrants, mandatory drug tests for welfare recipients, banning unions for government workers, cutting taxes, and abolishing Obamacare. Moreover he clothed these remarks in, well, clothes. Wearing a well-tailored suit, his formerly long blond hair now presidentially trimmed, Robert Burck, the once (and future) Naked Cowboy, told the nation of his dream of being that year’s Tea Party candidate. “American politicians,” he intoned, “are selling out America and its most cherished institution, that being capitalism.”3
Was he joking? Was it just a publicity stunt? What possible significance could this guy’s candidacy have? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Burck grew up in Greenhills, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati created by American politicians during the Great Depression as one of the government-sponsored “greenbelt communities” that provided jobs for idled construction workers and housing for cash-strapped Americans. In Burck’s words it was “safe and secure and the woods provided my friends and I with countless things to get into.”4 Upon entering adulthood, however, he couldn’t get away from it fast enough—because he believed he was born for greater things.
“I want to be the most celebrated entertainer of all time,” he told a reporter in 1999 when he first appeared au-most naturel in Times Square. His arrival there was the culmination of a nationwide nearly buff guitar-plucking tour that included some forty arrests.5 Having left Cincinnati for Hollywood, Burck had been understandably frustrated after several years seeking singing gigs, auditioning for TV roles, recording CDs to distribute, and working restaurant jobs alongside fellow aspirants for fame. It was then that a friend’s casual suggestion that he sing unclad at LA’s seaside sexual hotspot, Muscle Beach, struck him like a needed kick in the butt from God.
“I am doing God’s work,” he wrote, “and it’s tough. . . . [But] by God, I will be ‘the most celebrated entertainer of all time.’” And so he got back on his feet and out of his clothes. “If I can’t find someone with the capacity to get me famous overnight, I’ll get famous overnight by my own damn self,” he declared in his self-published memoir, Determination.6 From his Times Square base he became so popular with visitors to the Big Apple he attracted the attention of journalists, which in turn caught the eye of Madison Avenue ad men. Not only underwear maker Fruit of the Loom but other corporate heavyweights such as Pepsi, Chevrolet, Pizza Hut, and Citibank lined up outside this new celebrity’s (un)dressing room to sign him up for ad campaigns.
But the Naked Cowboy sought a grander campaign. “I have put another national vibe of my personality across the cosmos,” he confided in a diary entry later published in his book. “I just want more, and so I ask, what is the next thing that must be done to continue toward my destiny?”7
Answer: run for president.
His initial answer, however, was to run for mayor. Which he did in 2009, launching his campaign with the slogan “Nobody Has Done More with Less.” But Burck soon discovered that putting his vibe across the cosmos was a lot easier than putting it across the New York City Conflicts of Interests Board, a niche in the cosmos that Burck, like pretty much the rest of us, had never heard of. Under New York election laws, the Board demanded that Burck reveal even more of himself—things like his income and its sources. Which, in those years, ranged from $100,000 to $250,000 a year. Likewise his vibe didn’t jibe with the New York Board of Elections, which notified him that, in order to get his name on the ballot, he had to collect 7,500 verifiable voter signatures.8
Burck dropped out of the race. But genuinely determined when he’d asked himself what was next in his destiny, the following year he took another shot at politics, this time with his sights on the White House. Along with his announcement in Times Square, he spread the word on his website, announcing to the multitudes who came to view him there, “Naked Cowboy for President 2012.”
Yet by February 2011 the website no longer mentioned his presidential bid. And the 439 names registered with the Federal Election Commission as candidates for president in 2012 included neither Robert Burck nor Naked Cowboy. Returning us to the question: Was it just a publicity stunt? Yes. Which then returns us to the question: Was his candidacy of any significance? Nevertheless yes.
You can call Burck lots of things—egotistical comes to mind—but not stupid. Though to assert that America’s most cherished institution is capitalism leads one to wonder if he’d ever read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, where it goes unmentioned. Rather than quibble, however, let’s turn to an unquestionably cherished American: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I am persistent like Emerson’s ‘Hero,’” Burck wrote in his diary.9 Clearly he did not lack ego, but also clearly he was no dummy, as demonstrated by his familiarity with Emerson’s 1841 essay “Heroism.”
Nor was he so starry-eyed as to be unsuited, as it were, to deal with the day-to-day details of the working world dealt with by those who wear suits to work. When faced with competition on Times Square by a newcomer named Naked Cowgirl, he had his attorney send her a cease-and-desist letter asserting she was violating his trademark and demanding that she sign a “Naked Cowboy Franchise Agreement.” When the Naked Cowgirl, a former striptease dancer named Sandy Kane, disagreed, Burck took her to court. It may sound nuts, but there is yet to be a nut lawyers haven’t taken a crack at. The case became so entangled in legalities the two sides ended up agreeing to a settlement.10
Nor was Burck man enough to put the spurs only to cowgirls. In 2008 he sued the corporation that manufactures M&Ms when an ad for the candy featured a guitar-playing M&M wearing a cowboy hat. It was, he claimed, a Naked Cowboy M&M. Here too the case became so entangled in court rulings the two sides decided to settle it in private. The Naked Cowboy’s legal posse also went after the advertising giant Clear Channel and CBS.11
While intelligent and litigious are not synonyms, evidence of Naked Cowboy’s intelligence surfaced in the Village Voice article on his presidential announcement. Reporter Martin Tanzer observed that, after Burck had just declared he would make English “the universal language,” he descended the podium and moments later was giving an interview in Spanish to a Latin American news outlet. “This guy is complex!” Tanzer, quite correctly, assessed.12
It is here that we find the significance of Naked Cowboy’s fringe candidacy. Drilling down into Tanzer’s observation, even more can be assessed—starting with the not particularly startling but nonetheless often overlooked fact that each of our presidents, from George Washington on, was or is complex. More important, however, their complexity is in precisely the ways the Naked Cowboy expressed.
Burck, for instance, is genuinely sensitive to the feelings of others. But in complex ways, such as calling for English to be the universal language, then speaking fluent Spanish with those for whom it is their first language. On a more personal level, Burck wrote of the woman he loved during the years of his struggle for fame, “I wasn’t giving her the attention she deserved. . . . [She] was the only source of connection I’ve ever really had to a fulfilled existence. The excuse I would use was that I had a higher obligation to humanity, which I humbly admit I do, but she, I somehow consistently forgot, was my favorite human.”13
The excuse he admittedly used—that being a higher obligation to humanity—which he humbly admitted he had. If you could put that spin on a baseball and get batters to buy it, you could rule the World (Series). Or try this on for its presidential fit: “How many people can I inspire to achieve their goals by continually focusing on achieving mine? . . . Every time the Naked Cowboy succeeds, everyone whom I reach succeeds. . . . Everyone who knows my plans and expectations will be elevated by my efforts.”14
Here, however, is a difference between a candidate such as the Naked Cowboy and a candidate who has a chance of winning the White House: the candidates who win don’t say these things. But have they thought them? Lincoln did, as we saw when exploring the candidacy of Live Forever Jones. To have the determination necessary to become the president of the United States, how could one not? Which is a naked—and admittedly uncomfortable—truth. Beneath their political accoutrements, most, if not all, American presidents are naked cowboys.
And someday soon, dagnabbit (as the Naked Cowboy himself complained), cowgirls.