No Executive Privilege

Imagine, for a moment, the presidential possibilities:

A bloodied Bill Clinton, submachine gun in hand, mowing down terrorists aboard Air Force One who have just shot dead his national security advisor. He then hangs perilously out of the open rear hatch of the in-flight Boeing 747 as he tries to save First Lady Hillary and daughter Chelsea.

Or: George Bush strapping himself into a plane--much as he did in World War II--only this time to soar into battle against squadrons of space aliens who are trying to annihilate the human race.

Or: Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford taking matters into their own hands to investigate a kickback scheme involving the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Along the way, these grumpy ex-presidents swear up a storm, hop from moving trains, ride horses across the White House lawn, gripe about their legacies and ultimately realize these longtime political opponents really do have mutual affection for one another.

OK, so it’s not that far-fetched.

But these are just a few of the predicaments presidents of the United States have been placed in by Hollywood in recent films.

The latest is “Air Force One,” a big-budget thriller at 30,000 feet from Columbia Pictures that has superstar Harrison Ford portraying a fictional president, James Marshall, whose plane has been hijacked by terrorists trying to free their leader from a Russian jail.

Ford shoots, slugs, slams and wrestles his way past a planeload of gunmen, telling them in one memorable line: “Get off my plane.”

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Hollywood loves to make movies about presidents, but today’s movies increasingly portray chief executives in either wildly fanciful scenarios or simply as crooks, murderers and buffoons.

In “Absolute Power,” director-star Clint Eastwood plays a master cat-burglar who, during a break-in at a Washington-area mansion, witnesses President Richmond (Gene Hackman) kill a young woman during a late-night romantic tryst.

In “My Fellow Americans,” Jack Lemmon and James Garner play ex-presidents investigating the current president (Dan Aykroyd) as the vice president tries to have them killed.

In “Murder at 1600,” Wesley Snipes plays a D.C. homicide detective who is investigating the death of a lithe employee of the Office of Protocol, whose corpse has bled all over a White House bathroom floor.

And in director Tim Burton’s sci-fi comedy “Mars Attacks!,” Jack Nicholson plays President James Dale, who leers at a Martian in drag who has entered the Kennedy Bedroom.

Once, the presidency as it was portrayed in Hollywood films exuded seriousness and a sense of respect for the office. Henry Fonda, Raymond Massey, Fredric March, Ralph Bellamy brought dignity to America’s chief executives in “Fail-Safe,” “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” “Seven Days in May” and “Sunrise at Campobello.”

In 1933, Walter Huston starred as a crooked president who changes into a great president in “Gabriel Over the White House.”

True, there were satires along the road. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove,” the president (Peter Sellers) referees a wrestling match on a table inside the situation room between the Soviet ambassador and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And, in the 1968 movie “Wild in the Streets,” Christopher Jones is a singing idol-drug pusher who becomes president when the voting age is lowered to 14.

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But today, murder, sex and buffoonery at the pinnacle of the U.S. government is the norm while the portrayal of presidents who ennoble the office seems as distant as FDR’s announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The current sci-fi drama “Contact” even used real-life footage of President Clinton to convey the appearance that he was commenting on Earth’s receiving radio signals from a civilization in deep space. The White House fumed that director Robert Zemeckis had taken Clinton’s comments out of context.

Gary Ross, who wrote “Dave,” the 1993 hit comedy about a womanizing U.S. president who is incapacitated by a stroke and replaced by a look-alike (both roles were played by Kevin Kline), said the movies reflect the changing attitudes of Americans toward the presidency.

“The presidency used to be viewed with a lot more reverence,” Ross said, noting that one only has to listen to Jay Leno and David Letterman monologues or listen to talk radio to see how the chief executive has been turned into the butt of jokes and inflammatory comment.

Ross said despite excesses, he believes it is ultimately healthy for a democracy when people are able to poke fun at the presidency.

“I don’t think we should revere the office,” Ross said. “Then you end up with a kind of imperial presidency. We suffered from that in the past. I think Americans can revere the system of government without revering the president or the presidency. It would make me very uncomfortable for people to take potshots at the Constitution, but it doesn’t make me as uncomfortable seeing people having fun with the presidency.”

Ross said the “trappings of power are a natural thing to satirize and, ultimately, an important thing to satirize.”

At the core of “Dave,” Ross said, “was a tremendous respect for our system of government: at the end of the movie, there is a restoration of that system. Dave ends up going home and running for city council, which is all he should do anyway. The vice president ends up becoming president, which he should do under the 25th Amendment.”

Gail Katz, the producing partner of “Air Force One” director Wolfgang Petersen, said that while the president portrayed by Ford in her movie personally battles a gang of terrorists, “he’s not superhuman.”

“I think the first time he kills someone, he’s stunned,” Katz said. “I think he’s shocked at what he did and that he had to go to those lengths, and clearly he feels horrible about it. But in that situation, that is what he had to do.”

What the movie explores, and what Katz said Ford demanded in his character, was that the president be politically decisive.

“I think what’s important about our president is he’s independent and very courageous,” Katz said. “Action aside, he has a lot of attributes we admire in our presidents or want our presidents to have.

“Throughout history, we’ve had presidents who’ve had military backgrounds,” she continued. “I think the reason people wanted them is because they’re seen as war heroes or very decisive, very independent. They can make tough calls in difficult situations.”

Even the vice president in “Air Force One,” played by Glenn Close, is a decisive figure, grappling over the thorny issue of whether she should assume power in the absence of the president, Katz said.

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Pat Caddell, a former pollster and political advisor to President Carter who served as a consultant on “Air Force One,” said the filmmakers strove to be as realistic as possible underneath the action.

While Rob Reiner’s comedy “The American President” was a charming film with terrific lines, Caddell said, the White House staff would never talk to a real-life president the way advisor Michael J. Fox talked to Michael Douglas.

“In that movie, you thought [the president] was just one of the gang down at the bar,” Caddell said.

Caddell said Americans no longer view presidents with reverence largely because of White House scandals. “In a sense, we don’t look to the president as a heroic figure anymore,” Caddell said. “We look at the president now, I guess, like a storekeeper.”

Caddell said if the movies have dramatically altered the way presidents are viewed, it is because Hollywood provides a “reflective mirror on our hopes and thoughts.”

“One thing Wolfgang and everybody had in mind, was if we had left the movie simply with the idea of this guy playing Rambo, then we would have had a cartoon figure,” Caddell said.

Ford and Close wanted to deepen the characters, Caddell noted, so that now Ford’s president not only shows he has a responsibility to the country, but also to his wife and daughter. “He makes very real moral choices, so it’s not just having a heroic figure, but a morally heroic figure.”

Where movies about presidents seem to fail, Caddell noted, is when they portray the president as an unpleasant figure.

“Any time the president is in a position to hurt the country, I think people have problems with that,” Caddell said.

As a result, he said, “My Fellow Americans” bombed and “Absolute Power,” even with Eastwood’s star power, did not do the business some people thought it would.