George Clooney announces that he will not run for president of the United States, though he will play a presidential candidate in an upcoming movie.

“... (L)ook, there’s a guy in office right now who is smarter than almost anyone you know, who’s nicer and who has more compassion than almost anyone you know. And he’s having an almost impossible time governing. Why would anybody volunteer for that job?” Mr. Clooney told a news conference.

He's got me. Though, there doesn't ever seem to be any shortage of volunteers from either party.

As for how smart, nice and compassionate, Mr. Obama is compared to all the people I know, I'll have to think about that. I don't know what makes George think Obama's so unbelievably smart, other than the fact that he agrees with him on a wide range of political social issues.

Other than getting himself elected senator from Illinois and President of the United States, I don't know what he's done to prove that he is one of the smartest people on planet earth. Not that they are the be all and end all, I wouldn't mind seeing his SAT scores and college transcripts. He hasn't released them. But I bet there are plenty of people I know who scored higher than he did on those tests. Who's to say they aren't "smarter" than this president? And if Barack Obama ran for a job that he is finding "impossible" to do, how smart does that make him?

As for him being nice and compassionate, believe me, I've come across a lot of nice and compassionate people in my lifetime. Most of them didn't go into politics. Some are nurses, some are doctors, some are lawyers, some are teachers, some are social workers, some are businessmen, some are Special Olympics volunteers, a few are even (very few) journalists. Barack Obama would have to be pretty damn nice and compassionate to claim the title of "The Nicest and Most Compassionate Person I Know."

Still, I think it is good George Clooney isn't going to run for president. He makes pretty good movies. I liked "Michael Clayton" even though it required a terrific amount of suspending disbelief to believe huge corporations typically engage murder squads to kill people in order to protect their profits.

His new movie "The Ides of March" is about a Pennsylvania governor running for president on a platform that includes phasing out the internal combustion engine and the death penalty. I will see it. And I will do my best to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy Mr. Clooney's concoction. But clearly he doesn't know much about Pennsylvania, if he thinks we would elect an anti-death penalty, anti-car governor. But who cares. This is just a movie, made by a big-time Hollywood star who is not running for president. What more can we reasonably ask for?