To the extent that “queen of daytime” is any kind of office, it’s one Ms. Winfrey has never abused. She loves people, and she seems to understand the intensity of people’s love for her. But people also love power, and Ms. Winfrey’s display of it that night (and perhaps a New York Post column she retweeted) sparked pandemonium for her to ride it into Washington. President Oprah was fantasized about as an antidote to a caustic, whimsical president: the woman with the extensive “angel network” taking on a master Twitter troll, one television genius locking horns with another.

But the Smithsonian show leaves you thinking that she’d probably expect better fantasies from us. It makes you think she might be too good for whatever a candidate would have to do or say in this political climate to be elected president of anything.

BEFORE YOU EXIT “Watching Oprah,” you’ve scrutinized a case full of childhood photos, diary entries, high school letters and a signed copy of Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” You’ve soaked up the music, speeches, imagery and writing in a room devoted to the musicians, actors, authors and political movements that helped a young Oprah determine who she wanted to be. You’ve checked out the amusingly arranged spot devoted to her Oscar-losing performance in “The Color Purple” (she had her Oscar luncheon biscuit bronzed, instead) and the space that enumerates her early television-news work, including a three-minute montage of her in Baltimore and Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s that is one of the most charming pieces of editing you’re going to see. At some point, a young Ms. Winfrey, in spandex, has to put her legs up for an aerobics-class segment and jestingly complains, “Oh, you’re gonna love this shot.”