Celebrity support, always important in national campaigns, is likely to play an increasing role in the high-cost, heated presidential campaign of 2008.

When it comes to good-looking supporters, Barack Obama leads the pack, with Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, and George Clooney. And of course, there’s his powerhouse stumper, Oprah Winfrey.

Hillary Clinton is backed by a slightly older, more established, show business crowd which includes Chevy Chase, Danny DeVito, Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg.

He claims he IS America in the title of his best-seller, I Am America (And So Can You!). So why is it so surprising that Stephen Colbert has announced he’s running for president?

For starters, Colbert is running only in South Carolina. And he’s a comedian.

Sure, he’s won every award known to man except the Olympic gold. (Unless he gets into wrestling or weight lifting, that honor seems beyond even his reach.)

But the main achievement of Al Gore is not his comeback from having the White House snatched away, not his Oscar or even his sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize, announced today.

The real phenomenon of Al Gore is how connected he has become despite (and because of) his losing the presidency.

Gore has forged strong bonds not only in politics, science and the international environmental movement, but in finance, high-tech and Hollywood.

The Clinton campaign took a defensive crouch yesterday after reports that a company headed by one its top advisers had counseled Blackwater CEO Erik Prince.

A subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm headed by Clinton strategist Mark Penn, helped prepare Prince for his congressional testimony Tuesday.

However, Penn told Politico that he was not involved in the account, and said the firm’s work for Blackwater was “a temporary assignment based on a relationship that has concluded.”

Fred Thompson’s long-awaited announcement that he is running for president finally came last night, on The Tonight Show.

“You’ve been in the water for a while now,” host Jay Leno observed. “Are you starting to get a bit wrinkly?”

Thompson, 65, said his wrinkles did not come from water. “We’re where we need to be right now, and that’s one of the things I need to talk to you about,” he said. “I’m running for president of the United States.”

The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign announced yesterday that it would give to charity $23,000 received from Norman Hsu, a major Democratic supporter who has an outstanding arrest warrant for a 1991 fraud charge. Campaign officials pledged to review thousands of dollars in other donations from Hsu.

California authorities said Hsu left the state in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors. Hsu now lives in New York, where he is in the apparel business. On campaign finance reports, he lists his companies as Next Components, Dilini Management, Cool Planets, NBT and others.

Florida investor Bruce Sherman finds himself in the midst of another media company buyout. This time it’s Hearst-Argyle Television, which received an offer from majority shareholder Hearst Corporation.

Hearst, a privately held publisher of newspapers, magazines and Internet properties, already owns more than 73 percent of the broadcaster’s shares. It is offering $600 million for the remainder.

John Edwards, the candidate who has stacked his campaign on fighting poverty, was embarrassed once again last week by John Edwards the multimillionaire.

Edwards, who declared his candidacy from the decimated Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and who has repeatedly criticized foreclosures on mortgages held by victims of Katrina, is a major investor in Fortress Investment Group, one of the companies foreclosing.

Mitt Romney’s years at Bain & Company and Bain Capital are proving useful beyond the millions he is able to pour from his personal fortune into his presidential campaign.

Two of his finance co-chairs - Meg Whitman of eBay and David Brandon of Domino’s Pizza - have Bain ties.

The Washington Post noted yesterday that the campaign had attracted at least $196,000 in donations from Bain employees.

Romney personally loaned nearly $9 million to the campaign during the first six months of 2007.

Mitt Romney made a fortune at Bain Capital relying on business analytics.

Now he’s applying similar tactics to his presidential campaign, hiring Alex Gage, the expert used by Karl Rove in George W. Bush’s re-election.

Gage uses data-mining techniques to predict the behavior of voters, clustering them into groups such as “Flag and Family Republicans.” The approach is similar to that used by demographic marketing companies such as Claritas.

Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou are the best of friends.

But, as the New York Times notes today, they’re likely to avoid talking politics.

Winfrey endorsed Obama on “Larry King Live” in May, and is planning a fundraiser for him at her California home. Angelou is featured on Clinton’s web site, backing her candidacy and describing the importance of women running for high office.

In business, Warren Buffett likes to invest in industries he understands. That means insurance companies, a candymaker, furniture and jewelry stores, even a daily newspaper. Nothing high tech.

In politics, the Oracle of Omaha is much the same. He is one of the world’s wealthiest people, but remains an outspoken critic of economic inequality. He lives in the same Omaha house today that he bought for $31,500 in 1958 and mainly supports Democrats.

Buffett helped Hillary Clinton raise $1 million at a New York fundraiser in June and says he will do the same later for Barack Obama.

“If you’re the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent,” Buffett says. Of course, just as in business, he would be hard pressed to ignore a dream deal. For him, that would be a presidential ticket of New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who recently became an independent, and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican with populist views.

With less than $2 million in the bank and the departure yesterday of two top campaign aides, the future of the John McCain presidential bid appears cloudy.

Campaign manager Terry Nelson and senior adviser John Weaver announced yesterday that they had left the campaign. The Washington Post reported that the size of McCain’s staff had dwindled from 120 to 50.

McCain insisted that despite the staff changes and the money shortfalls, he would stay in the race.