He’s a humanitarian, a statesman, a movie star and eye candy for the female population of the planet—no wonder that George Clooney has had to fend off speculation for years that he ought to run for political office. But in a lengthy interview with Newsweek this week, maybe he finally puts that idea to rest.

“I didn’t live my life in the right way for politics, you know,” he told the magazine. “I fucked too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth.” A smart campaigner, he believes, “would start from the beginning by saying, ‘I did it all. I drank the bong water. Now let’s talk about issues.’ That’s gonna be my campaign slogan: ‘I drank the bong water.’ ” (Newsweek said he said “f--ked,” by the way, but we like to fill in the blanks so that you don't have to.)

Ummm. Wait a sec. Maybe that isn’t quite putting the idea to rest. Maybe he’s starting from the beginning. Would you vote for a guy who said, from the start, that he’d been a very bad boy, in a way that probably only George Clooney could have been? Well, we’re thinking the electorate might be pretty vulnerable on that score, and George might get our vote. For something. Everyone loves a bad boy sometime, and somehow, George has seemed to pull it off without becoming a scandal. Now that takes diplomatic and political skills, don’t you think?

Clooney plays a flawed presidential candidate in his next film, The Ides of March. Hmm.