COMMENTARY | Michael Barone, noting that President Barack Obama used to be compared to past U.S. Presidents, suggests in a new piece in the Washington Examiner that this is all wrong. We really need to compare Obama to iconic movie characters.
The one Barone has in mind is Peter Sellers' character in "Being There," Chauncey Gardner, the mentally challenged gardener whose vague pronouncements are confused with profound wisdom. Chauncey rises to the top of the Washington power hierarchy when at last he is being considered as a candidate for president.
Of course the difference between Chauncey and Obama is that the latter is not actually able to walk on water, making him not only a fool but a holy fool.
Barone, as he tends to do, has hit upon an insight about how Obama has managed to rise too rapidly. He really is an empty suit, but like Chauncey, people have read into his pronouncements ("hope and change!") what they have wanted.
Mind, there are other great movie characters Obama can be compared to. One that comes to mind is Francis Urquhart, the scheming British politician played in three TV miniseries by the late Ian Richardson who was affable and friendly in public, but utterly ruthless and cynical in private. Sadly Obama does not have a signature catch phrase. "You might very well say that. I couldn't possibly comment."
If one wanted to be crueler, one could also compare President Obama to another fictional British prime minister, Jim Hacker, that bungling, clueless politician portrayed by the late Paul Eddington in the series "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister."
Like Obama, Hacker had a certain political cunning, but his skills as a leader were limited to making speeches, proposing unworkable public policy programs, and engaging in political intrigues with his own bureaucracy, personified in the two television series by the nefarious Sir Humphrey Appleby.
Is there a fictional American politician whom Obama resembles. His rapidly diminishing circle of partisans would no doubt pick Martin's Sheen's Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" or perhaps President David Palmer from "24."
But the one fictional president who comes to mind is President James Dale from "Mars Attacks," played by Jack Nicholson, who is great at reading speeches, but is utterly at sea when the evil aliens start to run amok on Earth, even shooting up the White House, before finally being defeated by a stoner/country bumpkin. Hopefully, the Earth will not be invaded by aliens before the end of the Obama presidency.
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