Clooney would've won

Or: Come at the king, you best be ready to take his place

Lately we have been watching ER, initially to fill the hole in our heart left by The Pitt, but now as a free-standing addiction all its own. The breakout star of ER was George Clooney, who depicted Dr. Doug Ross, the roguish pediatrician who plays by his own rules. As his stardom approached escape velocity, it was amusing to watch them write the drama of his contract negotiations into the show itself, as Doug’s tendency to be Too Real endangered his career at the end of every season.

Periodically, though, my suspension of disbelief would be punctured by the frame-breaking thought that this was the man who took down a president. I am speaking, of course, of the op-ed in which George Clooney plainly stated that Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance was not a fluke but instead reflected his sadly diminished state. As a major donor as well as a good friend, Clooney could not be accused of holding a grudge, and as a political outsider, he had nothing more to gain than any other American concerned about Trump’s threat to our democracy. Biden did not withdraw his candidacy immediately, but as someone who followed those events extremely closely, it seems clear that Clooney’s intervention was decisive. He gave people permission to break ranks and speak openly and honestly about Biden’s condition.

Within ten days of the publication of the George Clooney’s op-ed, Biden’s candidacy was over—and democracy was, as we all know, saved. Kamala Harris said as much when she presided over the Electoral College count that would confirm Donald Trump’s victory. Given the negative outcome, one’s mind naturally wanders to alternative scenarios. What if Biden had withdrawn much earlier, allowing for a traditional primary to select a new candidate? What if the DNC had set up the mini-primary they seemed to be contemplating? What if Kamala Harris had not centered her campaign around Bush-era neocons? Strangely, though, no one has pointed out the obvious solution: George Clooney should have run. That was our shot—perhaps our only shot—to stop Trump.

I know the suggestion may sound absurd, but hear me out. George Clooney is almost universally well-liked, but he is not so successful as to be an institution. (Tom Hanks, for instance, would have been overkill and certainly would have backfired.) He is handsome and charming, but adept at playing against type as the roguish underdog. He is a reliable Democratic donor, which would reassure the base, but not a major public spokesperson for any liberal cause, so he wouldn’t alienate anyone out the gate. Yes, it might seem absurd to be voting for George Clooney as president, but that would just highlight the absurdity of voting for Trump, whose level of celebrity prior to 2016 was arguably roughly similar to Clooney’s. If both parties are giving us celebrity outsiders, then why not vote for the one you can bear to imagine seeing on TV every day for the next four years? And can you imagine how easily George Clooney would have humiliated Trump in the debates?

Clooney had all that in his favor, but I have not even mentioned his greatest qualification: namely, the fact that he is the one who knifed Biden. Even after his withdrawal, everyone in the Democratic Party held a mysterious reverence for Biden—despite the fact that this empty husk of a former mediocrity had let his personal vanity and pride seriously jeopardize Democrats’ chances to prevail in what turned out, finally, to really be the most consequential election of our lifetimes. Harris was reportedly hemmed in by her reluctance to break with her former boss, who had obviously chosen her for the most reductively demographic reasons and mostly left her to languish as vice president. By contrast, as the one to burst the bubble, Clooney would already be guilty of the worst possible betrayal, so any policy U-turns would appear trivial in comparison.

We are all aware of Omar Little’s immortal dictum from The Wire: “Come at the king, you best not miss.” Clooney did not miss. But to quote another 2000s prestige TV drama, he is guilty, like Mike from Breaking Bad, of taking a half measure when he should have taken a full measure. Dethroning Biden created a power vacuum, and a combination of indecision and inertia led to an empty suit straight out of an HR training video filling the gap. Hence I propose a modification of the Omar Little principle: if you come at the king, you must be ready to take his place. If George Clooney was going to become politically involved by shivving Biden, he should have been willing to go all the way. If he had, I honestly do think there is a good chance that we’d be looking at that handsome mug on CNN every day up through 2032. Stupider things have happened—indeed, a stupider thing did happen in 2024.

And so, against the fatalism that paints Trump as the inevitable culmination of the deep truth of the American project, I propose a slogan for those who affirm that, at least at that time, there was still hope and the battle against Trump was winnable: Clooney would’ve won.