Spit & Polish : 22 January 2012

Perhaps Hollywood should handle the US elections - they'd still be fantasy, but more entertaining

In any presidential election, the politicians, campaign managers and publicists crowd around their chosen candidate like the pilot fish that swim with the sharks, snapping up the predators' leftovers.

It's been that way for centuries, but now I think it is time for Hollywood's moguls and A-list stars to promote America's next president in exactly the same way that they plan and market a Hollywood blockbuster.

The difference between a presidential campaign and the release of an expensive movie is miniscule. They both create posters, T-shirts, press junkets, TV interviews and sound bites.

The difference is that if the Hollywood blockbuster fails, it will disappear within two to three months, but if you elect a president who turns out to be a dud, you are stuck with him for four years.

Does anyone remember the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter? It was during his presidency that the US created the word "stagflation", because its economy was unable to move in any direction. In fact, Carter only became an effective politician after he left the White House.

The TV coverage of the current US presidential primaries show how these town-hall meetings and walkabouts produce mounds of rubbish: the flags, the bunting, the balloons, the posters and the inevitable litter of the crowds.

The difference is that the street rubbish can be swept away, but the political rubbish gains a life of its own - on TV. As I watch the US election extravaganza, I can't help thinking that if George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Robert Redford and Oprah were to be in charge, things would be more entertaining and shorter - much, much shorter.

There has already been one great merger between Hollywood and Washington, in the shape of Ronald Reagan. He was a successful actor who became the first - and also the only - president who gave the presidency the lustre of a genuine movie icon.

The pundits agree that Reagan did not know much about politics, but he had the presence, style and star-quality that every movie idol naturally has, and it suited the White House to a T. Reagan never looked as if he was taking strain, and that was because he had such a sure, affable sense of being completely himself.

His wife, Nancy, also an actress, worked the White House as if it was a movie studio. I recall reading an account of the annual Washington journalists' Gridiron Club Dinner, a white-tie event. The journalists were hounding Nancy because of her expensive gala events and fabulous wardrobe. Their reports sarcastically referred to her as "Queen Nancy", but at the 1982 banquet she arrived dressed as a bag-lady and, in the spotlight, she mimed to the song Second-Hand Rose.

Next day it was a front-page story that shut the journalists up and although it was a risk, it worked. The Reagans knew how to use the power of performance, something the Obamas have yet to learn.

At the risk of being offensive, it's also worth noting that four American presidents died at the hands of an assassin, but Reagan, who was also shot, survived, and that's exactly what we want from a Hollywood president.

In fact, Hollywood just cannot resist the White House or the presidency. The array of screen presidents numbers at least 160 movies.

There was Nick Nolte, who did a great job in Jefferson in Paris (1995) playing the president who saw the French Revolution, which started in 1789. Louis XVI was publicly executed in 1793, and Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine nine months later. What Jefferson learned from that became the basis of the American Constitution.

There are - obviously - many films about former president Richard Nixon and Watergate, because it was the biggest scandal in the history of the American presidency. The best versions featured Anthony Hopkins in Nixon (1995) and Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon (2008).

The films about John F Kennedy are many and various. The most interesting is Oliver Stone's JFK, in which Kevin Costner played the district attorney who examined all the aspects of the assassination, with Gary Oldman as the supposed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

There have been innumerable TV series about the inside workings of the White House, the best of which was The West Wing, in which Martin Sheen played the president.

It's obvious Hollywood and the White House dovetail in many distinctive ways, because they both show us only what they think will please and satisfy us.

But Hollywood has the edge because a film can offer a detailed insight into the egos and the status wars of an election battle, something no TV interview would ever dare to do.

Disclosure and exposure are the very last things that the candidates and their teams would want to see in a film about the nitty-gritty of the political process, because a political campaign is built on promises and, as we all know, promises exist to be broken.