If you haven’t seen the video of Guy Goma on the BBC, you really owe it to yourself. Goma is the now-celebrated wrong man of the pundit world, a hapless job applicant (he was at the studio looking for a job in data support) who was mistaken for another guy named Guy who was supposed to comment on the verdict handed down in the Apple vs. Apple Corps case. As John Tierney and others have noted, the glory his performance comes not just in the instant, captured on camera, when he gapes at being intorduced as someone he is not, but in the follow-up. Asked by the BBC reporter if he was surprised by the verdict he answers, “I am very surprised to see this verdict becasue I was not expecting that.”

What he had been expecting was a little face time with some tool from HR, no doubt, not to have a mike clipped to his jacket and be asked about a subject not in his area of expertise. And while his game, even authoritative responses, have been touted as a primer in the basics of media-training (answer your question, not theirs — and never say “I don’t know”), I see bigger things for Guy.

Why not president of the US? Sure, there’s that little immigration hurdle — the native of the French-speaking Congo is new to England, and English — but a Constitutional amendment could take care of that. After all, our current president has no problem speaking on matters of which he knows very little indeed, lecturing scientists on science and economists on economics — even explaining to a group of journalists the meaning of “dissemble” (which he flubbed in both pronunciation and definition). What is certain about him is his certitude, and Americans crave that. Being the star of his very own Truman Show, Bush never gets to hear any bad news about his performance because he doesn’t read or channel surf. The look he gave Stephen Colbert at the White House press dinner was not so much one of annoyance as puzzlement: what was this guy talking about?

Barring the POTUS position, I say give Goma his own show, let people bring him questions he knows little of and let him expound on each one for five minutes. Then compare his response with those of the experts and see who makes the most sense. In fact, let the first topic be the war in Iraq: they guy named Goma versus the guy in the coma.