The Actor President
Who the hell would elect him? This is still America; nobody's gonna vote for some cowboy playing President. Not to mention how extreme a Conservative he was. ASB, unless he time travels back to the 1920's when such ideology could be acceptable.
Actually, I could see it. He had a televised speech at the Republican Convention in 1964 that was HUGHLY popular. His acting career at the time was seen as pretty much dead after "Bedtime For Bonzo". The 1966 California Gubernatorial race for the Republican nomination was wide open. After the curbstomping Brown gave Nixon with the full DNC/Kennedy apparatus behind him, NOBODY wanted to challence Brown in '66. He did have some administrative experience as the head of the Screen Actors Guild, so it wasn't TOTALLY crazy in terms that he had some leadership experience. The $ he raised for Goldwater and his own politics would make him very popular with California Republicans, not a very liberal lot.
So assuming, by default, he's got the nomination, how does he win? By running as quiet a door-to-door campaign as he can while hoping like hell that Brown basically takes victory for granted, doing very little campaigning of his own. Still, it is still a very long odds race. Brown would have to historically screw up in a November Surprise to lose. Assuming Reagan got grassroots traction, with help from the Goldwater wing of the GOP, and Brown DOES slipup somehow, Reagan stuns the nation with winning the CA governors mansion.
This is where things start to get ASB. You have to assume Reagan will spend all his time doing all the ceremonial stuff while he just lets all the best people (A GOP Best and the Brightest) run his administration for him. If he is REALLY lucky, and I don't know how he would do it, he finds (attracts?) those experts. So if everything in CA is running on all cylinders, he could have a very successful governorship. Especially when you consider how very low the expectations were for the "Cowboy Guv".

Assuming in this scenario he gets re-elected(!) he serves to '74. Now he is seen as the standard bearer for the rightwing of the GOP, at a time when the centrists are prostrate (Watergate) and the liberals are fading away. But the White House? What GOP candidate could win in '76? Against another Washington outsider? (Jimmy

) 1980 would be perfect for him. Only his re-election

eek

would have an ingrained problem with his age and the senility that struck him in the 90's might comeup sooner from the strains of the White House.
OK, lol. Go ahead, everybody start laughing.
