With the primary election being the nonstop topic of discussion over the past few weeks, it's time to take a good, hard look at the presidential nominees. However, once you get right down to it, the candidates are all basically the same person. None of them have the ability to inspire the way that the presidents in movies have been able to.
The best movie president has been, and always will be, Bill Pullman in Independence Day. His President Whitmore will be most recognized for bringing together not only the country after a disastrous alien attack, but the world. The speech he gives the troops towards the end of that movie rivals anything that Barack Obama has ever said.
None of the candidates seem to have the ability to be as much of a romantic as Michael Douglas was in The American President. It's hard to imagine someone like John McCain or Hillary Clinton making a public speech defending the character of the one that he or she loved. Only in the movies is something like that even possible.
Much has been said about how any of the candidates would be able to handle themselves in a situation of national security. Instead of wondering who would pick up the phone if there was a terrorist attack, people should be asking themselves whether the president would be able to call the right people for the job like Morgan Freeman was able to in Deep Impact.
Of course, in some movies the president is not always the hero, but an incredible doofus. The presidents portrayed in spoof movies by people, such as Leslie Nielsen in the latest Scary Movies or Lloyd Bridges in Hot Shots! make our current president seem like a genius on some of his worst days of mispronunciation. But this is not the image of the president that most people enjoy.
The president of the United States is a job that many glorify. Whether or not one disagrees with the policies of the person currently holding the job or the people running for it, the average American wants to see the job done to the best of its ability. And even if that doesn't happen in real life, there's always the chance for impossible perfection that can only happen in the movies.' Ethan Goldsmith is a junior video production major and a columnist for The Post. Send him an email at eg973705@ohiou.edu.
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Ethan Goldsmith
