OSCARS FOR PRESIDENTS
OCTOBER 8, 2011. First off, my site, nomorefakenews.com, is down at the moment. Technical problems, which should be ironed out in the next 24-48 hours.
I’m of the opinion that every president I’ve ever seen or heard has failed to carry off his part with convincing style.
I’m familiar with presidents from Truman onward.
There’s something about them. They’re just not good actors. They come off as melon-heads, despite, or perhaps because of, their best efforts. Now, all melons are not the same. But you can recognize the overall type.
Some presidents fumble with the role. Ford, Reagan (yes, Reagan), Bush One and Two. Others overdo it. Nixon, Reagan (he fumbled and overdid). Others go for “matter-of-fact” and miss the mark. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton. Others try prophetic and fall short. Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Obama.
As the director of the Magic Theater (not associated with any other group of the same name) based in San Diego, I have an easy answer. When an actor is struggling with a part, give him another one. Let him improvise a slightly different kind of person. Loosen him up. Let Reagan do a shoe salesman. Jimmy Carter does Jimmy Swaggart after the motel-peephole incident or whatever it was. Clinton does Elvis in Vegas. Obama recites from the Book of Revelation.
You get the idea.
The downside is, they then might comes across as un-presidential. But that’s only because we’ve become accustomed to presidents who are cartoons.
Using “presidential cartoon” as the standard, it becomes rather obvious that the Republican nominee in 2012 would be Mitt Romney. He edges out Rick Perry.
And if we admit that recent presidents couldn’t have been any worse, it makes sense to bring a REAL actor in for the job. Historically, we’d be talking about Jason Robards, Melvyn Douglas, Lee J Cobb, Fredrich March. Guys like that. Today, we’d go for Kenneth Branagh, Albert Finney, Tom Wilkinson.
They’d know what to do.
I think these actors could pull off the role of president so well that people would settle down. The country would relax a little bit. Despite the temptation to want a president who is some kind of con man we all know so well, if the part were played to a T, for once, we’d breathe a sigh of relief.
My first choice would be Melvyn Douglas. Go back and watch him in The Candidate (as the ex-governor of California) and Being There (as an ultra-heavy Washington DC insider). Mel knows. His gravitas makes Clinton’s gravitas look like Gilbert Gottfried.
How about George Clooney vs. Gary Sinise for the presidency in 2012? It ain’t Mel Douglas, but it has a bit of juice. And I have a feeling these two actor could articulate their political positions better than Obama and Romney. Or, in a pinch, Warren Beatty vs. Tom Selleck, with Jesse Ventura as the third-party candidate. Or if you just want a cage match, Adam Corolla vs. Al Franken and stand back. I’d pay to see those two debate.
The more I think about it, the more it seems real actors who aren’t B-listers could handle things better than than the overtly political animals we’ve been putting in office.
When a role like the presidency (of 300 million people in what is supposed to be a Republic) is pretty crazy to begin with, and then, on top of that, we allow bad actors who are also politically avaricious to occupy the office for at least four years, it’s certain to be a mess and sometimes a disaster.
If I ever start a political wing of the Magic Theater, the work will be about giving politicians hundreds of roles to improvise in dialogue, knowing that the experience will make them into much better versions of themselves, much freer versions, who can get out of their grasping egos long enough to find out what life could be all about.
That’s what we really need. People who DO know what life is all about. Not just one corner of it. We need them in the USA and we need them all around the world. This “let’s all come together” mantra is fine, but if the people who are sitting at the big table are obsessed and crazy and dangerous and deceitful, where is it all going to go?
Bottom line: a president SHOULD BE an actor, but one who has played and given life to many, many roles and therefore has felt what consciousness and imagination can really produce. Then we would have something. Not a victim, not an oppressor, not a thief, not a compulsive liar, not a puppet—but instead, someone who has played all those roles to the hilt and comprehends them and is aware and alive beyond them.
That would be a revolution for the ages.
Jon Rappoport
The first Magic Theater workshop will take place in San Diego on December 10 and 11. To inquire about attending: qjrconsulting@gmail.com