Could a George Clooney presidency save America?

For most of the millennium, George Clooney has been the movie star you’d want to have an affair with, hang out with, or simply be. He has basically won life’s lottery: handsome, Oscar-winningly accomplished, smart, funny, politically engaged, happily married. And if that wasn’t enough, he just sold the tequila brand he “accidentally” co-founded for a billion dollars. He’s the consummate Hollywood star; he’s basically the anti-Weinstein. There’s just one problem: the movies. His acting roles are beginning to read like a list of well-intentioned failures: Disney sci-fi Tomorrowland; the Coen brothers’ un-hailed Hail, Caesar!; Jodie Foster’s Money Monster. None of them terrible, but none of them great. Or successful.

His directing career isn’t doing much better. His previous, star-studded dud, The Monuments Men, covered the bases subject-wise – patriotic war action plus high-culture worthiness – but fell between the stools tonally. His latest, Suburbicon, is similarly worthy: a satirical reminder that 1950s America wasn’t as great as the Trump base seems to think it was, especially if you were black. Suburbicon should have chimed loudly with our white supremacist-friendly times, but somehow it didn’t. It took less than $3m on its opening weekend.

Is it time for Clooney to retire? He hasn’t acted for two years. “I’m not going to do movies just to be in front of the camera,” he told the Hollywood Reporter recently. “I’m not a leading man any more.” And as for directing, his options might now be limited. So, what could Clooney do next? Let’s think: universally popular, high-powered wife, buddies with Obama, fundraiser for the Democrats. Not getting it yet? We could go on: country in disarray, traditional barriers to political office demolished, the left screaming out for a charismatic figurehead. Why is Clooney making oblique political movies when he could simply run for office?

Rather than the anti-Weinstein, Clooney could be the anti-Trump; his alcohol brand is better for a start. He did a test run in The Ides of March, playing a smooth candidate running on a shaky platform of “integrity and dignity”. But Clooney has brushed off suggestions he might actually run for president. “Why would anybody volunteer for that job?” he told reporters at Venice in 2011. But when the question arose again this year, Clooney’s response was a little different: “Would I like to be president? Oh, that sounds like fun.” He was trying to sound sarcastic, but it wasn’t his most convincing performance.

Suburbicon is out on Friday 24 November