Whatever office Alec Baldwin decides to run for (and it would help if he could say which office he’s thinking about), I’m a supporter. He’s brilliant, emotional, rash, incisive, combative. Baldwin can obviously nicey-nice his way through anything (he’s an old hand), but it’s the intemperate side that makes him special.
Whatever issue President Obama will sidestep or finesse or soft-pedal, Baldwin will fume and just blurt it out, explaining his position with facts and conviction and that snide tone of derision, occasionally with bulging neck arteries and flying spittle. I love it.
The only thing Baldwin has to do is lose about 35 or 40 pounds. There’s a metaphor in being overweight that indicates a susceptibility to temptation, and that’s precisely what he doesn’t want to convey as a tough-talking Democrat. I’ve chatted with Baldwin and studied his physicality and he’s really big and thick , like a linebacker who’s gone to seed. He has to do something about that.
The clip is obviously from a discussion of his plans with Eliot Spitzer. It airs tonight on CNN’s Parker Spitzer.
In my dreams Baldwin would run against Obama in the 2012 primaries as a leftie agenda guy. But he’s probably looking at a New York or Connecticut Senate seat, or maybe a run for a Long Island Congressional seat.
In a July/August 2009 Playboy interview, Baldwin said, “I have sometimes thought I could move to New Jersey or Connecticut and run. I’d love to run against Joe Lieberman. I have no use for him. But it’s all fantasy. I’m a carry-me-out-in-a-box New Yorker. Here, anything can happen. Who thought Eliot Spitzer would go down the way he did? Senator Hillary Clinton left to serve as secretary of state. Two of the biggest forces gone. How much longer will Chuck Schumer stay as senator? After 2013 Bloomberg will be gone. What happens then? Do I run for Congress on Long Island? What’s Tim Bishop going to do? He represents my district.”