After Barack Obama's celebrity presidency is America ready for a hard man in the White House?

He is balding and – even his supporters would concede – a little bit boring. So how has Scott Walker, the governor of the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, found himself in the front rank of Republican candidates for president?

With neither an instantly recognisable name – like Jeb Bush – nor a balloon-sized ego that craves media attention – like Donald Trump– Mr Walker is currently eight points clear of Mr Bush in the electorally pace-setting state of Iowa, and in second place in national polls of all 15 possible candidates.

In an era where politics has become increasingly intertwined with celebrity, Mr Walker, the 47-year-old son of a bookkeeper and a Baptist minister, has ploughed a very different furrow, earning his stripes in the bare-knuckled world of state-level politics, far away from a detached and deadlocked Washington.

While rivals like Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and Tea Party darling, were grandstanding around the capital shutting down the Federal government, Mr Walker's pitch is that he was workin' in Wisconsin, bashing the unions, balancing budgets and slashing nearly $2 billion-worth (£1.3 billion) of taxes.

“If you are not afraid to go big and bold, you can actually get results,” has been Mr Walker’s message to the conservative grassroots in Iowa, often noting that his three election victories in Wisconsin had come in a state that has voted Democrat for president for more than 30 years.

Cutting taxes and regulation to spur growth is his pitch for bringing a "transformational change" to America. “He balanced budgets, cut taxes and beat the special interests, improved education created job and showed how to fight and win,” runs his gladiatorial promotional video.

For grassroots Republicans, sick of Barack Obama's celebrity presidency and the Washington media cabal they feel has unfairly doted on America's first black president, “boring” – or rather, down-to-earth - is actually part of the attractiveness of the Walker candidacy.

He is the Obama antidote, the ordinary-joe who once posted a photo of his bathroom sink and a tin of scouring powder on his Twitter feed, revealing that he and his wife, Tonette, were at home. "I'm cleaning the bathrooms & she is cleaning the kitchen," he wrote. "How Romantic …"

The message was deliberately prosaic: here’s the candidate who eschews the wit or snark that lit up the two tech-savvy Obama campaigns, shops at thrift stores and relies on scouring powder and elbow grease to clean his bathroom, just like the rest of working America.

His backstory is short, but compelling. Born to blue-collar roots, Mr Walker quit university and took a job to support his parents and then never returned to complete his degree, his life overtaken by raising a family and pursuing the conviction-politics that took him all the way to the governor's mansion.

And while there are Democrats who have questioned whether a candidate without a university degree can really be elected president America in the era of the knowledge economy, Mr Walker will seek to into America’s enduring tradition of anti-intellectualism.

The myth of the log-cabin president has always been just that, but outside the educated, urban elites large swathes of America still instinctively extol the virtues of real-world achievement over book-learning, as the widespread frustration with Barack Obama's professorial demeanour attests.

Mr Walker will still have to prove that he has the sureness of touch to make the step up from mid-size state Governor to world leader, after a series of unconvincing replies to some basic foreign policy questions, raised questions as to whether Mr Walker is ready for the big leagues.

In one interview, President Barack Obama singled Mr Walker out by name, suggesting he should “bone up” before anyone would take him seriously – something his advisers say their candidate has now done, taking a a crash-course in international affairs

Lastly, essential to any successful US election campaign, Mr Walker also has access to money – both a network of 300,000 small donors compiled from his three election fights, as well as huge potential support from anti-tax Conservative mega-donors like the Koch Brothers.

The big question is whether this curious blend of quiet man and red-clawed, fiscal firebrand is a winning package – first in the Republican primary fight and then in a general election contest against Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democrat nominee.

As the polls suggest, Mr Walker has a very decent shot at clearing the first hurdle: as an evangelical Christian and proven budget-cutter he, more than perhaps any other candidate, has the ability to unite both the socially and fiscally conservative wings of a heavily divided Republican party.

It is the second proposition – beating Hillary – that will test not only Mr Walker's broader appeal as a candidate, but also how far Mr Obama, and his own urban coalition of young people, women and ethnic minorities has managed to move the beating heart of America these past seven years.

At the age of 47, Mr Walker is a whole generation younger than Mrs Clinton, and yet paradoxically his Evangelical Christianity and unwillingness to accept evolution science, his bloody confrontations with the labour unions and his belief in supply-side economics seem to hark back to an altogether earlier era.

Republicans might be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan, but it is far from clear that with the economy now recovering and after decades of growth in government spending (under both parties) a majority of Americans will really want to follow Mr Walker back to the future in search of a better tomorrow.