Will Beatty bite the bullet?

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In movies, a big star is insulated by protocol and precedence. Your big-time silver-screen colossus might get killed in a film, but not by the hands of some nondescript extra who casually shoots him with nary a thought.

Alas, democratic politics aren't half so respectful of status: Last week Arnold Schwarzenegger got sand kicked in his face by millions of nondescript extras -- the California voters who rejected all four of the propositions he had backed. The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan says "with each day a star is in politics he loses some of his star-glow, and if he doesn't gain, each day, an equal amount of leader-glow he begins to experience a steady diminution of personal power." Arnold can't respond to Tuesday's defeats by going on TV and saying yet again "Ah'll be back" -- it's a cute line but not when you're being kicked down the hallway by the masses.

So now he's being stalked by Warren Beatty. In the run-up to Election Day, Mr. Beatty showed up everywhere Arnold did, as if he were the Actors' Equity-designated understudy for the role. If they're remaking "42nd Street," Arnold is Bebe Daniels, Warren's got the Ruby Keeler role as the plucky kid from the chorus who gets sent on stage with the stirring words, "You're going out there a youngster but you've got to come back a star." Or in Warren's case: "You're going out there a wrinkly woozy semi-has-been but you've got to come back a star."

Will he do it? "I don't want to run for governor," he said the other day, making it sound like he's interested in the role but won't audition. He's certainly in the right party: the Democrats have already taken on most of the characteristics of a bad Hollywood project -- no ideas, script full of ancient cliches, but if you can get the right star to commit to it we just might make this thing fly. And, though he never ran for office before, Mr. Beatty has the crucial ingredient: name recognition. All over California, women are saying: "Warren Beatty? Oh, yeah, right, now I remember. That guy I had sex with in the late '60s."

The "will Warren run?" story crops up every other election cycle. Last time it was back in 2000, when Al Gore was felt by some (about 300 million or so) to lack charisma and there was talk of Mr. Beatty throwing his hat into the presidential ring.

He wanted to run because he believed American politics was turning into a plutocracy in which the highest office in the land was put up for sale to a handful of privileged sons of wealthy men, like Al Gore and George W Bush. Mr. Beatty, by contrast, has come up the hard way, working his way through the long hard daily grind of Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Brigitte Bardot, Cher, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, Isabelle Adjani. ... He can sympathize with the underclass: he knows how it feels to hit rock bottom -- apparently, it was Madonna's in "Dick Tracy."

He understands what it's like trying to make ends meet. Crucially for California, he's sensitive to immigrants' needs: He appreciates the difficulties European art-house actresses face finding bankable Hollywood stars prepared to bed them.

In 2003, you'll recall, The Los Angeles Times assigned a special team to look into Arnold's sexual background. If they do Warren in the same way, it'll be the biggest hiring bonanza in U.S. journalism for a century.

Usually, when his magnificent track record of famous conquests is brought up, Mr. Beatty indignantly points out he's had sex with a lot of very obscure women, too. This is true. He has dallied not just with Natalie Wood, but also with her less celebrated sister, Lana Wood.

Lana, who played Plenty O'Toole in the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever," subsequently fell on hard times and found herself with little money and no work. Warren was touched by her predicament and considerately invited her to share his bed. As Miss Wood wrote in her memoirs: "Whatever his motives were, he gave me shelter and my self-esteem back -- and for that I was grateful."