Acting across party lines

This afternoon on Radio5Live, Simon Mayo interviewed actor Ron Silver, who plays political strategist Bruno Gianelli in The West Wing. For those who share my interest in this kind of trivia, here's yet another example of life imitating art, or maybe vice versa. In an early series of the programme, Bruno is an advisor to Jed Bartlet, the Democratic president, in his campaign for re-election, whereas in a later series he has, as they say, crossed the aisle and is working for Republican presidential candidate Arnie Varnick.

It turns out that Silver has followed a similar trajectory in real life, starting out as an active Democrat, and ending up supporting George W. Bush and speaking at the Republican National Convention. Silver regards himself as a 'Joe Lieberman Democrat' whose heroes are FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson, but whose party loyalties were sorely put to the test after 9/11. Writing on his blog, the actor disavows the predictable 'neocon' label preferring to style himself a 'revolutionary liberal'.