Joe Blundo: If Dr. Oz can run for office, that's a low bar virtually anyone can reach

Of course, Dr. Oz is running for the United States Senate.

As Donald Trump proved, qualifications for high office are strictly optional now. If you’ve got them, great, but TV resume and social media followers are far more important.

Our new candidate, a physician whose first name is Mehmet, but undoubtedly will want to be addressed as Senator Doctor Oz, could find himself elected to the same chamber where he was once lambasted for promoting green coffee extract as a miracle weight-loss cure.

Oz announced his candidacy for a Pennsylvania senate seat recently, fueling questions about whether he really lives in that state. But the only question that interests me is: Who’s next? Which big names with big heads will conclude that the nation must not be deprived of their services?

Here are my predictions for candidates of the near future:

Brian Kelly: After pledging his unshakeable loyalty, the college football coach brazenly forsook Notre Dame to take the coaching job at Louisiana State University. Notre Dame still had a good chance of making the playoff when Kelly bolted. It’s the football equivalent of an obstetrician walking out on a patient while the baby’s head is crowning.

I predict Kelly will be elected senator from Louisiana, serve a couple of years and then jump to Idaho, when that state offers to pay him more and throws in a shoe deal.

Cuomo and Cuomo: No way have we heard the last of Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York after several women accused him of sexual harassment.

And no way have we heard the last of his brother, journalist Chris, who was fired by CNN after he was accused of both assisting in his brother’s defense and committing sexual indiscretions of his own.

I could see a Cuomo-Cuomo presidential ticket with the slogan “Arrogant, Entitled and Ready to Serve.”

The Space Billionaires: Usually, billionaires are content to just buy politicians, but I think Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or both will eventually want to do more than pull strings offstage. Sooner or later, they’ll clamber out of their rockets and announce their candidacies, based on technological prowess (Musk) or business acumen (Bezos).

Musk will promise to build an elevator to Mars, while Bezos will pledge to remove carbon from the atmosphere by storing it in endlessly circulating Amazon delivery trucks.

The cast of “Succession”: The HBO series is about a wealthy and combative family that is threatened by business rivals and courted by power brokers.

The actors are so good at portraying ruthlessness, greed and self-delusion, it surely is going to occur to them that they have what it takes to succeed in Washington.

What about the headaches of serving in office? I’m sure Senator Doctor Oz will offer them a miracle cure for that.

Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist

joe.blundo@gmail.com

@joeblundo

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: If TV's Dr. Oz can run for office, pretty much anyone can qualify