My Top Four Favorite Moments from "The Contender"

1) President Jackson Evans use of food as a political weapon throughout the film. President Lyndon Johnson (1963-1968) did the same thing as president, and President Evans is definitely a savvy president in the mold of LBJ. It is nice to see a president modeled after LBJ be portrayed in a positive light in film!

2) Sam Elliott as Chief of Staff Kermit Newman. Sam Elliott nails it in his performance of the brilliant, cunning Chief of Staff. Typically, the Chief of Staffs for U.S. presidents have been brilliant operators and political masterminds like Kermit (Think of H.R. Haldeman for Richard Nixon, James Baker for Ronald Reagan, Erskine Bowles for Bill Clinton, and Andy Card for George W. Bush). It is nice to see White House Chief of Staffs get their just dessert on film!!

3)When President Evans tells Governor Governor Jack Hathaway "You're the future of the Democratic Party...and you always will be." I have heard some political kiss of death lines in my time, and this moment is right down that alley of dark politics! Governor Hathaway's wife is also a piece of work. She personifies the overly ambitious political operators and climbers that you will always find in the sewer of American politics.

4) Any scene with Gary Oldman as Rep. Sheldon Runyon. Shelly Runyon is your typical conservative Republican bastard depicted on film...but he is also one heck of a poker player and a savvy political operator. He reminds me of many of the smart Republicans who ran the Congress in the 1990s after the 1994 Gingrich Revolution. Hollywood needs conservative Republicans to be the bad guys in films, much like the Brothers Grimm needed ogre characters in their tales. In reality, however, my experience from working on Capitol Hill has instructed me that there are good people (and bad people) in Congress in both parties. And one person's political hero is always someone else's political goat (and vice-versa).

One of my least favorite characters in the film is Senator Laine Hanson. I seriously doubt that an avowed atheist would ever be nominated to the vice-presidency nor would be confirmed by the Congress. I find that truly hard to believe. Perhaps I am biased because I am a strong Catholic who teaches at a Jesuit University. But I do think that Hollywood's anti-religion bias came out a little too strong in the plausibility of an atheist being second-in-line for the presidency of the United States.

I Need the Dark Knight

I will be perfectly honest here. I first saw "The Dark Knight" in a sprawling multiplex last summer and I absolutely hated the film. I thought it was too violent, too gory, and too disturbing, especially in terms of the scenes of children being threatened with death. I left the movie theater last August feeling defiled, and I was very disgusted by what I saw. I didn't like "The Dark Knight", and I wanted a refund of my money. And if my name was Dr. Suess instead of Dr. Meiers, I would have sputtered out my cadence like in Green Eggs and Ham, "I didn't like it...not one little bit!"

I didn't like it, that is, until I saw the film the second time on DVD at home.

I don't know what it was that made me change my mind from "I hate 'The Dark Knight'" to "this is a brilliant film". Perhaps I officially made the transition from a "theater man" to a "DVD man" in terms of my preferred medium to watch and enjoy films. Perhaps I was distracted back in August in the theater by whatever petty ailments were afflicting me at the time.

But now I love "The Dark Knight", and each time I watch it I more and more see the parallels between the Batman in the film and war on terror that we fight against our bloodthirsty foes today.

Of course, the film has created controversy due to the parallels that some have seen between Batman (and his war against the terrorist Joker) and President George W. Bush (and his war against the Islamic terrorists).

Bush was the Dark Knight president. He was 100% focused on battling al-Qaeda and the bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists who want to kill us. Much like Batman, Bush became obsessed with battling the terrorists. Just like the Batman, he invented new weapons systems, launched intrusive surveillance and intelligence systems to keep us safe, launched wars of choice to take the fight to the bad guys, and hunted down his foes to the gates of hell and back. He also went overboard in terms of besmirching the image of the United States and alienating 70% of the American people. I do agree with Bush that you have to pick your poison: either fight the Islamic terrorist bastards overseas or you can fight them here in the streets of America. Our enemies will not go away and they aren't going to give up simply because we don't want to fight them. Much like Batman, Bush had his flaws. He was arrogant. He was self-righteous. He was a rich prick who came from a life of leisure and a family of money and power. He found it difficult to relate to the ordinary guy. But much like Batman, Bush had his strengths. He never wavered in taking the fight to the terrorists. He never backed down in Iraq. He pushed the envelope with his surveillance to keep us safe. We never had a repeat of 9/11 on Bush's watch. No Jokers came out to play in the malls, daycares, and restaurants of America after 9/11. Bush deprived the terrorists of their civil rights to operate freely in the U.S. - and thank God for that.

But the price Bush paid for his post 9/11 war on terror was huge. Bush destroyed his popularity over Iraq. Poll-driven presidents would have retreated once their poll ratings plunged to levels not seen since President Nixon and Watergate, but not Bush. Bush left office an unpopular and despised man, unable to appear in person at his own party's convention in 2008 and routinely booed throughout our land. He literally left Washington, D.C. in 2009 much like Batman exits "The Dark Knight": on the run, unpopular, and being chased by the dogs of society. However, I do view Obama as a Harvey Dent figure, the charismatic politician that we can believe in and who can pick up the mantle and continue the fight against al-Qaeda. The fact that Obama has decided to send 17,000 additional U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan is proof enough that he is willing to play the Harvey Dent role during his first term. Let's hope and pray that Obama Dent is successful as he picks up the mantle left by the Dark Knight president.

America has forgot 9/11. We have deluded ourselves that the threat has passed. We think we can go back to the way things were prior to 9/11. But we can't. Not now, not ever. Al-Qaeda won't go away simply because Americans choose not to fight the war on terror. Al-Qaeda won't go away because we won't use the term "war on terror" anymore, or close Guantanamo, or refuse to effectively spy on the terrorists messages overseas and in this country. Terrorism won't go away because we elected Barack Obama and want to have outreach to the Muslim world. The terrorists will hit us hard again. Another 9/11 is absolutely unstoppable now that our Batman President is gone. The only question I have is what the weak, Applebees America will think when we get hit hard in the next 9/11 attack. When they realize that the Joker is back and Batman retired a long time ago. Will they clamor for a new Batman, a new Churchill to guide us in a time of crisis? Or will they sue for peace, and capitulate to the terrorist demands? We live in bleak times, and we face nothing but bleak choices in our future. We had our fill of Batman in the Oval Office, and now we have driven him out of our life for the time being. But the Bat Signal will be back. Someday, in the future, we will clamor for it. Just not now.

A Decade of "Election"

"Election" is one of my favorite political films. It is flawless on so many levels. It absolutely nails it in terms of identifying how human nature is imperfect, how politicians are flawed human beings, and how the ideals of politics are muddied by the messy lives of fallible men and women. What I like about the film is that it isn't a "liberal film" or a "conservative film" but instead probes basic political truths through the simple prism of a high school election in Omaha, Nebraska.

"Election" as a film is a chestnut from a different era. The film came out in 1999 and is now 10 years old. 1999 seems like an eternity ago. Bill Clinton was president. The economy was booming and in danger of overheating. The U.S. government was running huge budget surpluses. A different place. A different time. Before 9/11. Before the bailouts. Before al-Qaeda became our mortal enemy. Before we had to take our shoes off at the airport. But despite all of these changes in our society over the past ten years, I find the message of "Election" even more convincing today. We do tend to flock toward the wealthy alpha-male jocks (Bush, Clinton, Obama) or the overachieving careerists (Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama). We do have a problem with success in this country (characterized in the film by Jim McAllister's jealousy of Tracy Flick's rise to power). We do openly root for the insurgent political underdogs while also trampling their rights and insuring their quick demise from polite society. We do have a problem with discussing issues of class and sex and power openly in this country, so we hide behind distractions and force our peccadilloes into the closet (or into cedar chests where we store our quilts, much like Jim McAllister's illicit porn collection). But most of all, we do place too much hope in our fallible politicians, pinning our hopes and dreams onto mere mortal men and women. And then we inevitably become disappointed when these politicians disappoint or die unexpectedly or don't live up to expectations.

If I had to vote for any of the three candidates (Paul Metzler, Tracy Metzler, Tracy Flick), I would 100% cast a protest ballot in favor of Tracy Metzler. Tracy Metzler is the only candidate who had the brains and the moxy to tell the truth about the absurdities of the political process. As an overtaxed, fed up middle class American, I am in a Tammy Metzler state of mind about the inanities of the political process. As a society, we have had too many Tracy Flicks in office - all with their fancy Ivy League degrees - and look what they have wrought us: an out-of-control federal debt, an economy that screws over the working middle class, out-of-control Wall Street bankers that destroyed our economy, a bankrupt educational system that is good at pumping paychecks to the professional educational racket but doesn't push our students hard enough to strive and succeed. We have also been the recipient of a huge trade deficit, a bankrupt American auto industry, a bankrupt Social Security system, and a country that invests way too little in the things we need for a successful future. If this is the legacy of the Track Flick government in America, I am ready for a little Tammy Metzler government to shake things up. Who knows, perhaps one day we will get the Tammy Metzler government and be able to rid ourselves of a Fairy Tale government once and for all.