While not an overtly political movie, Independence Day features an amateur President who can make a mean speech but can’t do much with policy.
This is what happens when you vote for amateurs and/or James Madison.
When we meet President Thomas J. Whitmore, his advisers are telling him that despite his service as a Gulf War pilot, his poll numbers are slipping because he can’t get anything done. “They elected a warrior and they got a wimp,” says the woman who starts as a powerful adviser to the President and ends the film as Jeff Goldblum’s powerless girlfriend.
Cut to the end of the movie. It turns out that having a fighter pilot President may be a good thing – someone’s got to shoot down this spaceship before it blows up Area 51. (No worries that every metropolitan area larger than a military base in northern Nevada has already been destroyed.) President Maverick is up there, the shields are down, he’s ready to take out the ship and his Fox 2 missile fails to fire. If not for the incredible sacrifice of Randy Quaid, the last vestige of American government would have been destroyed and the aliens would have won.
What if, instead of a fighter pilot, we’d elected a former Governor or a pro from the Senate Armed Services Committee, someone who knew how to manage a government bureaucracy?
Fox 2! Missile failure!?!? If only Dave had paid those military contractors!
Perhaps that person could have held defense contractors accountable and ensured that the missiles on America’s fighter planes would actually fire. Perhaps instead of the sniveling Secretary of Defense who failed to mention the fact that we had access to alien technology until after LA, NY and DC were obliterated, a professional President would have appointed a SecDef with some sense of what “need to know” actually means.
We chose wrong, America, and Randy Quaid paid the price. Never again.
(Note: Fenzel had a different take on Whitmore in his ID4 piece last July. Anyone who’s listened to the podcast knows that when Fenzel and I disagree, he’s usually right. Not this time.)
So in November, when you go into the voting booth, don’t let Hollywood lead you astray. Don’t vote for the person with the slick ads that talk about sharing your values. Don’t vote for the Boy Scout, the small businessman, or the fighter pilot. Don’t vote for the guy/gal you want to have a beer with.
Will you be better off voting for the career politician who actually knows how this stuff works? You betcha.
#30#
PS: In my last article, I took Aaron Sorkin to task for writing the worst political speech in history. Today, I’d like to praise Mr. Sorkin for being alone in Hollywood for grasping this concept. 45 minutes of searching didn’t find me the exact quote, but in an episode from the third of fourth season of the West Wing, Sorkin has Toby or Josh present the idea that, somewhere along the line, America forgot that it takes someone extraordinary to run the world’s most powerful country. Help me out in the comments if you know the quote!
“Well, actually…”
President Whitmore’s missile didn’t fail. He successfuly fired it, but it hit the side instead of striking the main weapon. Randy Quaid’s missile DID fail, which is why he had to ram the alien ray gun kamikaze-style.
That being said, clearly Whitmore’s greatest failure was, as you pointed out, not appointing a more competent SecDef. I mean, seriously, “need to know”? “Plausible deniability”? Worst excuses for keeping the President out of the loop EVER.
The comedy King Ralph starring John Goodman perfectly exemplifies yiur point, despite not being about an American president. Ralph, being blue collar working man, discovers the hard way that there’s more to being royalty than smiling and waving to his subjects. The best part of the film is towards the end when he abdicates the throne once he figures out that there’s another heir and that he’s grossly unqualified to be king.
Well “well, actually”‘d sir. Still, if Whitmore had logged a few more hours in the halls of government and a few less in the cockpit, Randy’s missile might have worked.
So last night, unable to sleep after finishing this, I came up with another point.
The underlying disagreement between liberals and conservatives is this:
Liberals see the government as a benevolent place where we come together for the common good.
Conservatives see the government as the great malevolent squasher of individual freedoms and free markets.
If Hollywood is so liberal, why do they keep making films in which the government is a villain? The idea that the average private citizen is more capable of governing than the entirety of the Federal Government is (or was once) the core value of the Republican Party.
They may go on Obama’s jet and raise him some money, but the story that these Hollywood types are selling reinforces the narrative of his opponents.
Hollywood: secret conservative bastion?
The Sorkin quote is from “The Two Bartlets” in the third season: “Yeah, but a funny thing happened when the White House got demystified. The impression was left that anybody could do it.”
I agree whole hearty that a Senator seat should not be appointed to a guy who saves a bunch of Boy Scouts. The Governor of the State should reach out and find the most qualified person and let them buy the seat. You don’t have me on record actually selling the seat, do you? Good.
@DPSquared
Where did you find that? Josh enlisted my help looking for the quotation, and we were googling all last night!
The Overthinking It Army is truly mighty.
The article should have include man of the year!
@mcneil
You must realize that a sub group known as proggresives like micheal moore are pretty anti goverment as the way it is. Just look at how libreals hated the bush administration for enacting the Patriot Act and the Iraq war.
I hope the election of obama will drive amercia away from its current anti platonism mindset.
McNeil, I see a slight contradiction in your example of Whitmore. He was elected on his status as a former soldier- not even a war hero or celebrity like Jackson, Grant, Eisenhower, etc. So yes, he’s an everyman, but what makes him less *politically* qualified pre-election than the real military presidents of our past? If the basis for saying he’s not qualified enough to be president is his lack of political experience, the same would have to be said about those real presidents, too- ones you brought up as exemplars.
I’m not disagreeing with your idea, though. In fact, it’s something the FF’s thought of themselves, hence the implied meaning behind “man” (read: male, white, Protestant, wealthy, business- and/or land-owning) in the Bill of Rights and Constitution, and checks on the dumbassity of the masses (like the Electoral College).
I think it goes a bit deeper than that, even: also relevant here is the role of the “noble idiot” across the board as a folk hero in American cinema and other narrative formats, as well as Americans’ seeming preference for “aw shucks” folk heroes rather than competent people as role models and leaders. See, for example, Being There, Forrest Gump, and All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. (Thought: does this mean that the lack of credit counseling and education in early school settings is the true culprit of the sub-prime mortgage crisis? Because I remember being told VERY little about how to avoid variable rate mortgages at five.) It’s as though Thoreau’s “simplify, simplify” has transmogrified into didacticism for dumbassery, when in fact, there’s a huge difference between living simply and being, well, simple.
I think as a nation we want to be able to say “He’s got character and personality, and that’s what counts!” when that’s not what counts at all. Or, at least it’s only a bit of what counts. What counts much more in making people good at things is training, ability, judgment, and the skill and knowledge to think critically and intelligently about cause and effect, past and present. If you actually think that “Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get,” and you’re sitting in, say, the Oval Office trying to decide, say, how or whether to avert a war or other disastrous outcome, this is a huge problem: in government and diplomacy, it’s a really, really bad idea for the sum of your existential and moral perspective be tantamount a giant ellipsis. But again and again, the narrative/cinematic hero is a charming, aphoristic dolt and people love to superimpose this “ideal” on government.