Actor Ron Silver has died at age 62 of esophageal cancer. Silver shifted from being a liberal Democrat to become a far right Republican in response to the 9/11 attack. Towards the end of his life he seemed to be moderating his views, acknowledging some of the faults of the Bush administration:
Silver’s last public appearance came on “Larry King Live” in late October just before last year’s presidential election.
The actor seemed to be swinging slightly back to the left, and took a moderate, down-the-line stance on then-Sen. Barack Obama’s race with GOP rival John McCain.
Silver acknowledged the GOP’s failings under President Bush and seemed resigned to an oncoming landslide.
“The Republican Party, if they are out of power for a while, needs to regroup and rethink who they are as a party,” he said. “This deregulation, this whole Reagan Revolution did not seem to work in this crisis.”
Silver appeared in nineteen episodes of The West Wing, playing political consultant Bruno Gianelli. The storyline mirrored Silver’s real life as Gianelli was a Democratic consultant who managed Jedd Bartlett’s reelection campaign. He later crossed party lines to work for Republican candidate Arnold Vinick in his campaign against eventual winner Matt Santos.
i wonder if he starting him and Dennis Miller started hanging out at all after the Lib –>Devil flip-flop? lol
In a case of life eventually coming to imitate art, the Arnold Vinick character was rather baldly modelled on John McCain and took a very conservative running mate against his better judgment and found himself slowly dragging to the right as the campaign progressed… all after having seen his candidacy as a fight for the ‘real soul’ of the GOP.
I had a great deal of respect for Ron Silver as an actor and will miss his work.