Actors who could’ve been Presidents?

Bomster

Bomster

Banned

David T

Fred Thompson was for a while a serious contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But it is hard to see the GOP winning the White House in 2008, unless Thompson's nomination somehow prevents the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression...
 
Chapman

Chapman

I have no thoughtful, legitimate points to make here but I will say: President Harrison Ford, please.
"Never tell me the odds" could be a hell of a slogan.
 

jlckansas

Charleton Heston and Warren Beatty both talked about running for Governor and/or Senator from California, simple step up from there.
 

David T

If we look at actors who actually ran for office and won (not actors who ran and lost or who were merely talked about as potential candidates) it seems Republicans (Reagan, George Murphy, Fred Thompson, Rex Bell, John Davis Lodge, Arnold Schwarzenegger--though of course he was ineligible to be POTUS--Fred Grandy, Robert Dornan, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood) clearly outnumber the Democrats (Ben Jones, Al Franken, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Sheila Kuehl, and Will Rogers, Jr.) Note that all the Democrats I named except for Jones and Franken won in Los Angeles area districts.

I don't think the paucity of Democratic actors getting elected outside southern California is a coincidence. As I once wrote in soc.history.what-if, "Democratic actors are vulnerable to the 'Hollywood liberal' stereotype, whereas a Republican actor-politician has the advantage of defying that stereotype ('casting against type')"
 

Anglocalvinist67

When Ronald Reagan announced for Governor of California in 1966, someone (was it a studio exec?) said, "No, no, it's Jimmy Stewart for Governor, Ronald Reagan for best friend."

Stewart was a beloved actor (and considerably higher profile than Reagan had been as one) a bomber pilot in World War Two (Reagan's eyesight kept from out of combat so he made training films), and a political conservative as Reagan was. He definitely could have done it had he wanted to, IMO.
 

Anglocalvinist67

Oh yeah, and Roseanne Barr, before her latest incarnation as a cranky Trump supporter, ran for President as the nominee of the Green Party a few cycles ago as a cranky leftist.
 

thatsbunkers

Banned
Jesse Ventura could run in 2000 for the reform party. Don’t think he’d win but he would do better than the reform party did irl
 

MorganKingsley

I say Kirk Douglas since that dude is fucking ancient and it is not too unrealistic that in like the 60's he could decide to quit acting and get into politics. Can we just agree it is impressive he is over 100
 
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