The Bulworth Presidency

In an interesting piece for the New York Times (odd, I know), Peter Baker stumbles upon something important regarding how the president sees himself:

“Being in office for nearly four and a half years gives the president some perspective — it helps separate the signal from the noise,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a White House senior adviser. “When you have dealt with real life-and-death problems, the political ones seem much smaller and affect you less.” 

Yet Mr. Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.' 

“Probably every president says that from time to time,” said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama’s movie-inspired aspiration. “It’s probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.”

But, like me, if you've never seen that forgotten Beatty masterpiece, here is a section of a review by John Podhoretz that is, shall I say, enlightening:

In Bulworth, which [Beatty] co-wrote and directed, Beatty plays a U.S. senator who suddenly becomes a Marxist while running for reelection -- and receives 71 percent of the vote before being assassinated by an insurance company. It would be tempting to describe Bulworth as the single most left-wing portrait of the United States ever attempted on film, but Bulworth is not actually set in the United States. It is set in Beattyworld, a fantasy land in which the suffering masses are just waiting for a politician who will wander around yelling "Socialism!" and "Ebonics? Great!"

Ha.