Clooney: I'm No Candidate

Tue., Sep. 26, 2006 10:35 AM PDT by Josh Grossberg

We already have Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, well, by George, why not President Clooney?

Don't hold your breath.

At a photo op Monday in Burbank with the Gubernator, George Clooney smacked down repeated suggestions by the assembled media that he'd make an excellent candidate.

"Believe me, you don't want me in politics," Clooney, 45, told reporters.

Clooney and Ocean's Eleven partner in crime Don Cheadle looked on as Schwarzenegger signed legislation intended to pressure Sudan's government to end genocide in that country.

Clooney, who has never shied away from political causes, whether it be campaigning on behalf of dad Nick's 2004 run for Congress, organizing celebrity telethons to raise money for relief efforts the wake of 9-11 and the Asian tsunami, making hot-button films like Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana or lending support to a grassroots effort to pressure the Bush administration and the United Nations to halt the killings in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.

When asked if he might follow in the footsteps of other actors turned politicos, such as his Batman & Robin nemesis Schwarzenegger, the Oscar winner demurred.

"That's a bad idea. He's gone on to be governor, and I still think I'm Batman," Clooney quipped.

Asked what he thought about a group of fans who turned up wearing T-shirts touting Clooney's non-candidacy, the actor shrugged: "I think they're probably kidding."

The former ER doc made headlines last week when he joined Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wisel in New York to urge the U.N. Security Council to intervene in Darfur after the Sudanese rejected a resolution authorizing 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers into the area. Clooney and his cohorts warned that failure to send in troops by Sept. 30 could lead to a repeat of the type of slaughter that occurred in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

"So after Sept. 30, you won't need the U.N. You'll simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones," Clooney said. "In many ways it's unfair, but it is nevertheless true that this genocide will be on your watch. How you deal with it will be your legacy."

In any event, Clooney's too busy with his day job to moonlight as a candidate.

When not on his soapbox, he has been working on Ocean's Thirteen with his former business partner and longtime collaborator Steven Soderbergh. The two also have teamed on the upcoming murder mystery The Good German.

Clooney is also set to play a lawyer in the thriller Michael Clayton and has signed on to star, direct and cowrite Leatherheads, a romantic comedy set in the world of 1920's football that's expected to start shooting next spring.