Where Are You, Dream Candidate?

In fact, the two most authentic candidates in the field are Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware. Unfortunately for them, they are authentic senators -- not a group that voters usually promote to higher office.

So the all-too-prosaic current roster of declared candidates is the principal provocation for all this buzz about offstage dream candidates. After all, neither party has an inevitable nominee in the field, and the front-runners all have obvious weaknesses. If the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees are burdened by unusually low approval ratings in polls, the stage will be set for the ultimate dream candidate: the third-party savior. H. Ross Perot can't be the only bored billionaire who has thought about controlling the guest list for the Lincoln Bedroom. Remember how easy it was for Perot at the beginning of his 1992 campaign? He was the front-runner in polls for a while against a Republican president (George H.W. Bush) and a hard-charging Democrat (Bill Clinton).

Imagine a Ross Perot who doesn't turn completely flaky in the home stretch. Imagine a Ross Perot with real governing experience. Imagine a Ross Perot with proven bipartisan appeal. Imagine Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is finding thinly veiled excuses to make speeches in places such as Texas and Oklahoma and whose chief political strategist has let it leak that he is studying 50-state ballot access for independent presidential candidates. Bloomberg may keep the hope of a dream candidate alive for another year.

"The West Wing" has surely also been a stimulant to the search for the dream candidate. NBC broadcast 154 episodes of the show over seven years. It continues to run in worldwide syndication and has strong DVD sales. About 50 million Americans have seen an episode or two, and about 20 million have seen a couple of dozen episodes. In each episode, they have seen either a president played by Martin Sheen or a presidential candidate (the tax-cutting Republican played by Alan Alda, the liberal Democrat played by Jimmy Smits) who was always at least trying to be true to his ideals. For the audience, it's the trying that counts. As voters, it's all they ask. If they saw a candidate like that -- a real-life Bartlet, whether a Democrat or a Republican -- in a real campaign, it would be a landslide.

This campaign could be the first time that all the dream candidates get into the race. And one of them could win. But dream candidates always look, well, dreamy until they decide to run. In campaigns gone by, most dream candidates seemed to know this. Mario Cuomo and Colin Powell certainly did. And so did Martin Sheen.

lodonnelljr@gmail.com

Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., a former

executive producer and writer of NBC's "The West Wing," is a senior political analyst for MSNBC.