An American President

It's no secret that I'm in love with the movie "American President". I will watch it any time it's on TNT or TBS or any of my other favorite channels. I've always been a sucker for big speeches and optimistic characters and maybe that's why I love Aaron Sorkin...and Barack Obama. There's not much I can add to the Obama commentary from the past few days. He is awesome, it was an amazing and historic night, and his speech made me cry. But Tuesday night one thing struck me so strongly... He is just like a fictional movie President. And I mean JUST like a movie character. His delivery, his confidence, his words of optimism, hope, and his general ability to make flags wave, butterflies fly, and birds start singing. Pretty amazing really. Ahh, but not so amazing once you think about it. You see, his campaign chief David Axelrod, was a consultant for "The West Wing" when they were devising the Jimmy Smits Presidential nominee storyline. And what else? Well, Obama just hired Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Besides the fact that his brother is probably the biggest agent in Hollywood (and the inspiration for Jeremy Piven's character on "Entourage"), Emanuel was the inspiration for Josh Lyman, Bradley Whitford's character on "The West Wing". Got all that?

Nonetheless, Obama's speech on Tuesday got me thinking of all of the great Presidents we've seen on the screen. His speech definitely reminded me of Andrew Shepherd from "American President" with a dash of Josiah Bartlett from "The West Wing". But also a bit of the humility of Dave Kovic/Bill Mitchell from "Dave". Plus a little bit of the rousing aggression of Bill Pullman's President in "Independence Day" and the intelligence of Laura Roslin from "Battlestar Galactica". And even though David Palmer from "24" claims he paved the way for Obama, I doubt Barack would trust Kiefer Sutherland to do anything besides get drunk at the Inaugural Ball and hit on Michelle.