I am stunned. If this came less credible sources, I would suspect a joke.  Respected veteran political reporters Mark Halpern and John Heilemann, who now helm Bloomberg Politics, say they know who Bill Kristol has in mind as his “impressive” third party candidate.

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French -- whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.

So far, nobody is saying anything to confirm or – more significantly -- deny this.

Don’t get me wrong. French is an impressive guy, a military veteran, respected lawyer, and among my top 4 or 5 favorite writers for National Review. But, ahem, the hour is late and he is unknown outside of the small subculture of conservative political junkies with large vocabularies. Unless Peter Paul Singer or some other conservative billionaire is willing to pony up big bucks for crash signature-gathering efforts in the 49 states (minus Texas!) where ballot access is still possible, he just won’t get on the ballot in enough places to be taken seriously.

If Frank Capra were directing the 2016 election as a  movie, then maybe a guy like French could take the nation by storm. But as far as I know he has zero political experience, is not well known as an orator, and faces huge problems with name recognition.