Academy Award–nominated No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin has been tapped by Oliver Stone to portray George W. Bush in the director's next project, Bush, which will attempt to explain how Dubya went from a middling Andover grad to a middling Yale grad to a middling Harvard MBA to a middling business executive to a middling baseball executive to the Jesus-loving, teetotaling President of the United States. Or, as Stone says, from "an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world."

Stone, of course, knows from crooked presidents and conspiracy theories, but he is insisting Bush will be more an even-handed analysis of the man's ascendancy to the White House and less about what happened after he got there. In Brolin, he has a lead who nailed the Texas twang in No Country; the rest of Bush's orbit, however, has yet to be cast. Radar has some suggestions ...

Katie Holmes as Laura Bush: Both are essentially sentient beings who have been overshadowed by their husbands and who have yet to demonstrate conclusive proof of having either a sense of humor or a personality. Katie's ability to cheat and deceive is a nice bonus.








Jack Nicholson as Dick Cheney: Big Poppa Jack has caught a lot of flack of late for essentially playing himself in each of his films. Which isn't a bad thing if he channels the bombast and ego into Dick.










Dennis Haysbert as Colin Powell: Who better to play the lone reasonable member of Bush's original cabinet than the guy trying to sell you insurance three times every hour?












Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Karl Rove: A gimme. They even sort of look alike.













Anna Devere Smith as Condi Rice: You come up with another black actress who isn't Halle Berry or Vivica Fox.














Will Ferrell as Jeb Bush: The mop-topped funny man does a mean Dubya; we're thinking that his running around in underwear shtick will also play in Florida.











Alec Baldwin as Donald Rumsfeld: He could actually play any of these guys, but it'd be especially funny to watch him tackle the man who once said, "As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know."





Smoking Man from X-Files as John Ashcroft: Both equally mysterious; both equally ugly.














Fred Thompson as George H. W. Bush: He's certainly not gonna be the real President. The perfect way for him to segue back into Law and Order.













Hillary and Haylie Duff as Barbara and Jenna Bush: The blonde and the brunette. The popular girl and the hanger on.