Politcial Actor Committees

I realize that my initial pledges of triviality and banality have been violated as of late, but I guess I just got caught up in some politics. I have another thought that I simply transmit to my zero readers, and then I'll *try* to curtail the political nonsense.

Fred "Law & Order" Thompson has been getting lots of press with his weird, teaser-of-a-bid for the GOP presidential nomination. Lots of people are drawn to him for reasons that I'm not sure I care to know in detail. But his popularity in the press has made me wonder: if he gets the nomination and gets elected, what does that mean? Does it mean that when Americans get themselves into a "pickle" (an Iraq-flavored one in this case), they feel the need to elect an actor to high office?

There's some precedent here. As a Californian, the most readily available example is my own governor, Ahhnold Schwarzenegger. The CA budget was on the fritz so Californians decided to throw out the current governor and install an actor in his place. "He defeated a robot made of molten metal; surely he can balance the budget!"

But there's one more example I would like to mention: Reagan. I didn't exist at the time (that is, I hadn't been born, but I was probably conceived briefly after Reagan's inauguration), so I'm not sure if there was a clear "pickle" in the 1980 election. Perhaps voters considered the Iranian hostage crisis a big pickle. I don't know. But we elected a (bad) actor in the process. The good people of California had elected him governor decades before "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." (real quote, no joke!)

It's just something to think about. At this point, a sophistimacated blogger might segue into a meditation on American decadence, decline, and disrespect for intellectual ability. But, you know me better than that.