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ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS
If Only `Reel' Were Real and We
Had Take-Charge Presidents
by Dick Polman
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Tuesday, August 12, 1997
Has anybody noticed that the big summer blockbusters of 1996 and '97 have featured American presidents who kick some serious butt?
Right now, it's the Ford administration - and we're not talking about Jerry, that guy back in the '70s whose claim to fame was that he fell down the stairs while leaving Air Force One.
No, that was real life, and we're talking here about "reel" life, although sometimes these days, in this era of saturated celebrity, it can be tough to tell the difference. Which is precisely why all the talk right now is about the Harrison Ford administration, and the way his "Air Force One" is a stage for the dadgummest display of American gumption and Big Stick machismo this side of Teddy Roosevelt.
And just one year ago, we cheered for President Bill Pullman, who proved his manhood by strapping himself into a warplane and hurtling toward the heavens for a close encounter with lethal aliens, on "Independence Day," no less - an act of true-blue bravery that no doubt boosted his poll rating among the handful of Americans still alive at the closing credits.
In fact, you can even go back another year to "The American President," and discover dashing chief executive Michael Douglas, who stands up for his principles and tells the right-wing moralists that he's ready to fight for the woman he loves and so what if there's an election coming up.
These guys may not necessarily be the presidents we deserve - some commentators insist that Bill Clinton is the perfect choice for the narcissistic and morally confused '90s - but they're certainly the kind we're dreaming about.
We want our reel leaders larger than real life. We think cinematically now, and maybe we have Ronald Reagan to thank for blurring the line. He took his stage directions from Michael Deaver, the political impresario who knew that good pictures sold the modern presidency on the 6 o'clock news.
Clearly, we want our fantasies rendered in color 40 feet high with digital sound. Clinton breaks bread with the GOP, and we applaud him for that in the polls, but what we vote for at the multiplex is a tough guy who tells his foes to stuff it. Clinton dithered about Bosnia for years, and we didn't really mind because we didn't want the casualties, but what we truly love, when the house lights go down, is a commander who won't abide genocide.
Take President Ford, for instance. We know implicitly that he's the genuine article. We know nothing about his political past but it doesn't matter. Because we already know what he was doing in the 20 years before he became president. He was busy pummeling Imperial storm troopers, Colombian drug lords, IRA extremists, Nazis in search of the lost ark, and hordes of people in turbans.
Ken Starr wouldn't dare investigate that kind of guy. We happily assume that President Ford, at age 55, will have no problem outfighting a gang of beefcake terrorists who survived Afghanistan and appear to have spent their rest of their time at Gold's Gym. Minutes into the flick, our hero has even unveiled the Ford Doctrine, which would commit America to military interventions wherever freedom is imperiled, and although it sounds a bit grandiose, it does make the president seem almost as important as Bill Gates.
In other words, we know in our hearts that Ford, unlike Clinton, would never deliver a State of the Union address that was built around momentous lines such as, "You must read to your children every night," and "We should connect every hospital to the Internet."
Indeed, it seems that Hollywood has promulgated a slew of regulations governing the scripting of its dream leaders. For instance:
-- A reel president, unlike our real president, doesn't play "politics." He doesn't "compromise." Those are dirty notions. It's fine for President Clinton to embrace the GOP's priorities, but President Ford would never stoop so low.
-- A reel president is not putty in the hands of his advisers. Unlike Clinton, whose pollsters told him where to go on vacation, Ford announces a major policy change without telling the handlers, and when they question him, he barks, "Get behind it!" As for President Pullman, he's urged by his military aide to cease his Top Gun attack on the alien craft. But Pullman says no way, "I want another shot at him!"
-- A reel president knows right from wrong, and damn the consequences. President Pullman's first lady tells him, "You're staying there to keep people calm, it's the right thing to do." President Ford tells his national security adviser, "It's the right thing to do, and you know it." President Douglas declares, "I'm gonna go door to door . . . to convince Americans that I'm right."
-- A reel president draws a line in the sand with a swell sound bite. (The real President Reagan may have started this trend by invoking the reel Dirty Harry's admonition, "Go ahead, make my day.") And so we have President Douglas warning his right-wing antagonist, "Bob, your 15 minutes are up!" And President Pullman pilfering Dylan Thomas by declaring, "We will not go quietly into the night!" And President Ford strangling his persecutor with a parachute cord and growling, "Get off my plane!"
-- A reel president refuses to put the best political spin on his actions. Think about "that" one for a moment. Ford orders a commando raid that successfully nabs a madman in Kazakhstan, yet when he is feted for this at a dinner, he shrugs it off and declares, "I don't deserve to be congratulated." Unlike the real president, who did not fault himself for failing to halt the killing of 200,000 civilians in the former Yugoslavia, the reel president castigates himself in public about genocide in Kazakstan and says, "We watched it on TV, and hid behind the rhetoric of diplomacy. How dare we?"
-- A reel president has a daughter. Just one daughter, no other kids. President Douglas' daughter plays a trombone, President Pullman's daughter sleeps in Daddy's bed, and President Ford's daughter rolls her eyes when Daddy says something dumb. Why one daughter? It could be a Chelsea thing, or more likely it's because dream leaders also have to be '90s-style sensitive guys, and it's tougher to show that if they're saddled with teenage boys who might say, "Uh, Dad, like, maybe if you don't kick butt, you suck."
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