Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.
The Democratic presidential race for 2028 appears to be wide open today. No shortage of obvious hopefuls, with another batch who are probably mulling it over. More will pop their heads up in the weeks and months to come.
Here’s one who deserves serious consideration: George Clooney. I’m not joking, and this is not whimsy.
Clooney would be 67 years old on Inauguration Day 2029. Not a youngster, but certainly not played out. He would be younger during his presidency than Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Ronald Reagan, and about the same age as Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush.
Clooney is more than just a pretty face (although his appearance wouldn’t hurt him on election day). He checks a lot of boxes for Democrats and many independents. A Barack Obama supporter and an endorser of Hillary Clinton, he also endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and has hosted fundraisers for him.
But in July 2024, following Biden’s disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump, Clooney called for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. In an op-ed for the New York Times, he wrote this: “I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.”
He went on to state what so many Democrats thought but were too timid to say publicly: “I saw Biden three weeks ago at my fundraiser for him. It’s devastating to say it, but he is not the same man he was, and he won’t win this fall.” Clooney called for a new nominee, citing a possible primary at the Democratic National Convention.
A few months ago he stood by his op-ed: “I was raised to tell the truth. I feel as if there was a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party. I was not proud of that. I also believed I had to tell the truth.”
There’s a lot more to George Clooney than a successful acting and producing film and TV career. For more than two decades he’s led fundraising and publicity campaigns for humanitarian crises around the world, including in Chad, Haiti, Darfur, South Sudan, Syria, and elsewhere. He has focused spotlights on atrocities in South Sudan and Darfur through TV documentaries, and worked directly with Syrian refugees in Europe to help open national borders to them. He organized a telethon, Hope for Haiti Now, in 2010 to collect donations for Haiti earthquake victims.
A champion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights, Clooney has performed in TV productions for those causes, and works with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to create a safe space in schools for children.
In 2019 Clooney wrote an open letter calling for the boycott of nine American hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei, whose country punished homosexual sex and adultery with death by stoning. He was joined in the high-profile publicity effort by other well-known personalities, and a few weeks later the Sultan announced that the law, while still remaining on the books, would not be enforced.
Clooney and his wife, human rights attorney Amal Alamuddin Clooney, are very wealthy. George Clooney’s worth is estimated around $500 million, a little less than half of it from his movie, TV, and commercial career and the rest from business investments and a $100 million real estate portfolio.
He and a couple of friends founded a tequila brand company in 2013, which they eventually sold to an international distilled spirits corporation for a billion dollars. Clooney made about $230 million from the sale.
The Clooneys are parents of eight-year-old twins, a son and a daughter.
Amal Clooney is worth about $50 million in her own right, mostly from her impressive career as an international human rights lawyer. She is one of the most highly recognized attorneys worldwide, and has branched out into university positions, public speaking, and humanitarian publicity work.
George Clooney was born in 1961 in Lexington, Kentucky. His father was a broadcast journalist and his mother an Ohio beauty queen and city councilwoman. George’s maternal fourth great-grandmother, Mary Ann Sparrow, was the half-sister of Nancy Lincoln, mother of President Abraham Lincoln. That makes Clooney and President Lincoln half-first cousins five times removed. Clooney is also the nephew of singer and actress Rosemary Clooney.
He attended schools in smaller cities in Kentucky and Ohio. He earned all A’s and a B in high school, and tried out for a spot with the Cincinnati Reds baseball organization, but did not make the first cut. He attended Northern Kentucky University and the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either.
Before entering his acting career he sold women’s shoes, sold insurance door to door, stocked shelves, worked in construction, and cut tobacco.
Clooney has said several times in recent years that he’s not interested in running for any office. So have others who ended up changing their minds.
Clooney is no stranger to political and public affairs activism. He would bring to a presidential campaign his universal voter recognition, his easy demeanor, his familiarity with current domestic and world issues, his business success, his comfort in the spotlight, and his reputation for truth-telling. And his good looks.
I can’t imagine a Republican candidate eager to spar with him on the debate stage.
Democrats could do a lot worse than George Clooney.
Top image: George Clooney delivers remarks at the Kennedy Center Honors Dinner in Washington, DC., on December 3, 2022. State Department Photo by Freddie Everett is available via Wikimedia Commons.