Our Mount Rushmore of Fictional Presidents
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Hey, Matter of Opinion listeners, it's Michelle Cottle here, and we have a special holiday treat for you. Last month, we released a bonus episode for our paid subscribers, but today we're going to share it with all of you. It's just a taste so you can hear what we're doing for people who subscribe. And if you aren't a paid subscriber yet, what on earth are you doing?

Go on over to Apple or Spotify and link your New York Times subscription or sign up for a new audio subscription. Now take a listen and enjoy. All right. Well, happy early... Stop laughing. Happy...

Michelle's in charge. Wow. I have some issues this week. So happy early holiday, Moobsters, and welcome to the Matter of Opinion bonus feed. Bonus. Carlos came up with the suggestion to talk about our favorite fictional presidents, why they appeal to us. Blame me. What do you mean, why you? You get credit for when you come up with a good idea. I said blame me. He actually wanted us to pick our favorite magical realist Latin American novelists.

But that was vetoed. You're pigeonholing me. I'm not into the magical realism. I'm more of like a gritty, vargasiosa realism. Oh, my God. But they get wrapped up into the boom generation. This is my recurring... And that's bullshit. Anyway, sorry. Ha ha!

My recurring way of pushing Carlos's buttons is to imply that he likes Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I mean, he's OK. He's just like he's not my favorite. That's all. Not your favorite. Not true. He's the best of the magical realists. It's the stereotyping. It's like when people are like, oh, Ross, you must love Robert Frost.

And I'm like, well, yeah, actually, of course you do love Robert Frost. I have books signed by Robert Frost made out to my great grandfather. But, you know, I mean, I tone it down, boys. I'm bringing you back in. All right. All right. President this. Yeah. As I was saying, Carlos has come up with the brilliant idea to talk about our favorite fictional presidents, which after an election that was seriously stranger than fiction is just perfect.

So I'm sticking to fictional presidents, right? Not... No, no. I'm telling you what I'm doing, okay? You're not the boss of me. What I'm doing is I'm not going to do, like...

actors depicting real presidents, right? Like not like Daniel Day-Lewis, like overacting as Lincoln, you know, or Paul Giamatti, you know, a wonderful, I thought, rendition of John Adams. Like that's not the thing that I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and pick the most like obvious, cliched, well-known American president. And that is President Josiah Jed Bartlett.

From the West Wing, played by the great Ramón Estevez, aka Martin Sheen. For the young ones in our midst, for the young moops who may be listening, the West Wing was a television show on something called the Broadcast Network that was NBC. It started in 1999, ran for about seven years, and depicted kind of the day-to-day workings of a democratic White House. Now, for

For me, the series started almost exactly the time that I moved to Washington in the fall of 99. And so like everyone that I met was talking about this show or watching it. And it sort of became the surround sound to my introduction to D.C. And, you know, it was kind of like the center left fantasy. Right. It was like the Clinton White House, but with like a better person at the middle of it.

And so it was both like historical revisionism of the Clinton years and also like an alternate history of the years that sort of like center left Democrats were living through in like Bush era Washington. And so I think that was part of why it appealed to some people like move to Washington, wanting to like be different characters in the West Wing. Now, Bartlett, you know, he was sort of the center of gravity of the show, but not even the most interesting character. There were some really personal reasons why I liked President Bartlett.

Careful listeners of Moo may have noticed, may have gleaned that I am a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

And so was President Bartlett, right? He was always wearing Notre Dame gear, always talking about it. It was kind of a minor plot point in some shows. So I like that. Also, careful listeners of Moo will have noticed that my co-hosts like to joke that I'm, quote, an economist. Well, Bartlett was a real economist, right? Only in an Aaron Sorkin fantasy does a Nobel laureate economist become president, right? And that's what happened on the show. And finally, a thing I loved is that Bartlett spoke Latin.

And in fact, that became a thing throughout the show. There's a famous scene where he's kind of like angry praying to God in Latin. In the Washington. At the Washington Cathedral. Yeah. Yep. That's not enough to buy me out of the doghouse. Hey, crate on my day, old Pio.

Adéu, Justo. For me, that was appealing because, like, at the aforementioned Notre Dame, I sang with the liturgical choir and we sang a lot of hymns in Latin, so I kind of learned some and I thought that was very cool. There's our Christmas bonus episode. Yes! Exsultate, Justi, Indomino. But, you know, and now we've kind of come full circle for me because I'm watching the West Wing episode.

Oh, my God. You are not ruining another generation. Ross, can you please take this apart, please? Sure.

Well, so the funny, do you want me to critique Carlos's choice or you want me to offer my... First, I want you to smack down Carlos's choice. Otherwise, I'll have to do it. I have a confession to make. Oh, my God. You're a West Winger, too? I have never watched an episode of The West Wing from start to finish.

to finish in my entire life. This despite being a child of the 1990s, someone who, you know, despite being decades younger than Carlos, did come to Washington, D.C. around the same time. I believe you were eight years my junior, Ross. You're gonna pay for that one, my friend. Decades and decades younger. And...

So my understanding of the West Wing is entirely based on... Right-wing critiques of the show and the weekly stand-in? No, no, West Wing, no, well, West Wing love. No, I mean, actually, the fundamental critique that I'm most familiar with is the left-wing critique of the West Wing, which gained currency probably late in the show's run and then, you know, throughout the Obama era and beyond, right, which was the idea that this was sort of a pleasant...

center left Clintonite fantasy where the policy stakes were always extremely low. You know, you were always like cutting incremental small board deals instead of doing sweeping single payer health care reform. And then, in fact, it was a vision of politics that like, you know, belong to the 1990s and should be left there. That was not again, that was not the right wing critique. That was the left wing critique of the show.

That's exactly what it was. I mean, that is not just a critique. It's an accurate depiction of the show. Yes. Right. So that's I mean, obviously, there was a right wing critique as well, because it was sort of one of these Sorkin esque fantasy worlds where the brilliant liberal president always knows exactly how to lecture the benighted right wingers. I've seen a few clips to that effect.

And there's a lot of people walking in corridors, walking and talking. The walk and talk became a famous West Wing event. But yeah, I feel like I should be against the West Wing for general reasons. But I'm not. I have no strong view. And in fact, you know, I am a 1990s appreciator. So to the extent that the show represents a certain kind of 1990s nostalgia, probably I should be

for it. But didn't Bartlett cover up his multiple sclerosis? So that to me, though, especially given the Democratic... That was sort of the great scandal of the... Right. Yeah. Right. So he was not actually in the end a perfect moral paragon. Oh, no. He was even maybe a tiny bit Biden-esque in his approach to letting the public know about his own infirmities. And it was funny because when people were talking about like, should...

you know, should Biden step down and will there be, you know, an open convention and the rest? People like, oh, come on, that's just like a West Wing fantasy, you know? And like, that's exactly, exactly what happened on the West Wing. The president was hiding sort of a deteriorating medical condition. But of course, Bartlett disclosed the illness and then proceeded to run for reelection and spoiler alert, win. So, yeah, eight years. That,

That's my fundamental objection to the show, which is that it taught an entire generation of people that politics is a place for like...

idealists who get to go in there and flaunt their virtue and their self-righteous speeches all the time. When we know it's a place for cynics who have no virtue. It is a place for hard-nosed realists for the most part. It is the art of the possible, not the fantasies of whatever. These two critiques fly in the face of each other because Ross is saying the critique is that they were too focused on the art of the possible and not swinging for the fences.

And you're saying they're too idealistic. So which is it, guys? Get your stories straight. I don't have to pick. I said that was the left-wing critique. And you know I don't agree with the left-wing critique. I'm just putting it out there. It needs representation. So what do you like, Ross? Who do you want? Who's your president? I'm a child of the 90s. There's only one choice. What is it?

I mean, surely you can guess it's, you know, it's President Thomas, Thomas J. Whitmore. Oh, my God. The, you know, former Gulf War fighter pilot turned. Well, you don't even have to mention the movie like acting like it's some sort of fictional thing. I mean, this was the man who faced down an alien invasion and gave. Oh, my God. You worked aliens. I've never seen the movie. What? What?

Oh, you got to see. No, sorry. Frost, go on. Go on. Continue, Ross. I have thoughts on Whitmore. There are aliens. Whitmore is also a kind of 1990s fantasy. Who plays him? Someone tell me who plays him. Bill Pullman. Just Google Bill Pullman's speech in Independence Day. He gives a rousing speech at the end. The unaccountable fact that Bill Pullman was a major movie star for a little while. Unaccountable and yet vindicated in this performance. He's like a poor man's poor man's

Poor man's Harrison Ford. In Sleepless in Seattle, he's not the lead. He's like the lame boyfriend, right? The foil. But he became a lead. He's great in that role. Briefly. Yeah. And he is great.

Right.

kind of way. And perhaps it's fate that today is the 4th of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression or persecution. I'm delivering the speech, by the way. I'll be quiet. But from annihilation, we're fighting for our right to live, to exist.

And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night. Oh, my God. We will not vanish without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive. Today, we celebrate our Independence Day.

Oh, my God. We're switching you to decaf. Bill Pullman did it a little better. That's just harsh, Carlos. If you want me to do another take. No, no, no. I wasn't wearing a fighter jock's gear. You know, I did. I blow it. Was that? No, no. That was excellent. That was excellent. I should have done the I should have done the Bartlett, you know, screaming at God in the cathedral. Independence Day, Michelle, is a truly great event.

Americana movie that crystallizes like the spirit of the 1990s in which, you know, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum together. Brent Spiner, who plays Data in Spinner.

Star Trek The Next Generation shows up in an amazing role as the guy who runs the secret Area 51 laboratory that has known about the aliens all along. They don't let me out very much. This is just, it's both a great movie and it's impossible to top that performance as a fictional president because no other fictional president has so completely saved the

the world. It even has James Rebhorn, who is like one of the greats. He's one of the great, you would recognize his face. He's one of the great slimy, untrustworthy character actors. And he's playing the secretary. I think he's the secretary of defense. Secretary of defense. Yes. And who gets fired. Yeah, he gets fired. You know, it's just like it's got it's

It's got everything. And Judd Hirsch plays... Judd Hirsch, that's right, as Jeff Goldblum's dad. ...plays Jeff Goldblum's dad. And it's a very, you know, they're all good. Like, I like that movie. I always conflate it in my head with Air Force One.

Because Harrison Ford plays a similar kind of like, you know, ex, you know, former military president who's just kind of trying to do the right thing. And it has like, in the same way that Bill Pullman has the famous speech that Ross rendered, Harrison Ford has this like, get off my plane, you know, which is the great moment in that movie. When I have co-taught a class at Yale on the crises of liberalism, my mind

One of my colleagues who co-teaches the class shows that movie as an example of American sort of George W. Bush style hubris. Oh, the opening speech, the opening speech in that movie is a disaster. Yes. Yeah. The conceit in that movie is that the U.S. is going to

you know, never make a compromise or a deal with any dictator or terrorist or anything ever again. And then we're going to negotiate. We will not negotiate with anyone anywhere. And it is sort of maximal, you know, American supremacist, like our values and our interests are aligned. It's still a great don't get me wrong. It's still a great movie. Kind of counters that, though, doesn't it, Ross? Like you think so? Because then immediately he's forced to negotiate.

Like right away, he's forced to negotiate with the terrorists who take over Air Force One. He's forced to negotiate. But in the end, he gets to just beat them up. Right. But but he does give in. Right. He's immediately forced to kind of give up on what he had just promised. It's an interesting reading. And they have to like sleazy the sleazy, you know, national security advisor, who's the equivalent of the sleazy defense secretary in Independence Day.

who's telling him like, look, you know, like this is going to be a real problem with our allies. Should have consulted with me, you know? So do we need to recommend this one too to viewers? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Air Force One is fun. And it's also like one of the really creepy elements is that the terrorists need a guy on the inside to help them. And it's a secret service agent who they turned, you know, which is like a very spooky moment. Who is that act? That's another great, that guy is another like... I don't know. I don't know who that guy is. Um...

I'm going to look it up. And also it has Gary Oldman in such a bad accent with Mother Russia. Yeah, I would turn my back on on God himself for Mother Russia. Yeah, just incredible stuff. People, especially our younger, our younger viewers. If you want to understand the 1990s, if you watch Independence Day and Air Force One back to back.

I think you will grasp something that is, you know, hard to convey through argument alone. These are like what Hunt for Red October was in the 80s. Yes. No, but in the way that Hunt for Red October kind of like is a good kind of Cold War era movie, these movies are kind of like campy depictions of the real challenges of like post-Cold War era, still trying to figure out what we are, Washington in the 90s. Xander Berkeley is the

Character actor who plays the sinister Secret Service agent. Yeah. Air Force One was 97 and Independence Day was 90. Was it the same year? No, it was 96. All right. So I'm going to go back a little bit farther. Okay. All right. All right. But I'm still doing the 90s and I'm going to take the moderator's privilege to go rogue. I was given clearance to go international. So mine is...

is Francis Urquhart, who is the prime minister in the original BBC version of House of Cards, which is far superior to the American version that people went, I loved it so much. I could not watch the American version. I could not abide Kevin Spacey doing this role. But this is based on novels, British thrillers about a person

Prime Minister who you start out when he's like a member of the Conservative Party. I think at the time he's the chief whip. This is post Thatcher era. He's unhappy with the moderate regime that's in charge. And he is pure Machiavellian, sinister, low-key British just idiot.

evil, in the best way possible. I mean, he thinks he's doing the right thing, but it's mostly ambition and very much, you know, like the American version. He's got a wife who is backing him up, and you track him in the BBC version through three series. There's House of Cards, To Play the King, where he takes on the monarchy, and then The Final Cut. He

He's lower key sinister than the Kevin Spacey. There's, you know, there's no real scene chewing, that sort of thing. And it's just so British. I love it. You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment. That is the, that, that phrase took over Britain for a while. It was like, it was just. Wait, wait, what's the, what's the line? So anytime somebody asks him something that he doesn't want to be on the record agreeing

agreeing with, but he'll say, You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment. Michael Samuels. You might think that. And that's basically his test. I mean, that was just took over actual British. I've never seen either the American or the Brit custom cards. Michelle is completely right. You should not watch the American version. Well, actually, I will tell you, I watched the first episode.

of the American, and I just couldn't, I couldn't abide by it. No, so bad. Well, an American, for all that we started out, you know, talking about cynics in Washington, there is fundamentally something slightly guileless about American politics. You know, we may be corrupt, but we're always, we're always sort of weirdly innocent in some way. And the Brits are not. If you want real Machiavellianism, you have to go to the old world. You just have to, I think.

So that's definitely my... Carlos, you would like that better than The Iron Man. You would... No. Yeah, I just don't know that I will. Especially the first season, I think. No, no, you should. Oh, yeah. No, she's right. I watched that when I was...

Yeah, probably like 13. It's from 1990. Yeah, my parents. It was a Masterpiece Theater thing, I think. Okay, okay, it's good. It's good. It's good. Ian, did we say Ian Richardson? Ian Richardson is the lead role, and he is. Did we mention it's good, Carlos, and that you should watch it? Carlos, did you know that it's good? Yeah, everything is like, oh, the British version of fill in the blank is always better. Yeah. And it's almost always true. If you like it so much over there, why don't you just move? Yeah.

Why don't you become a subject of King Charles III? You know, one president who I...

I remember in part because of... I thought of him when J.D. Vance started, you know, had his little moment about like, Democrats say it's racist to drink Mountain Dew. I thought of... Remember this? You missed that news cycle? You missed that moment? I think I may have been on vacation that week. He gave a speech. It was one of his very first speeches after being named the VP nominee. He was in his gawky formative years of being the VP candidate, which he's still in. And he...

I think he ruined it by saying he was having a diet Mountain Dew. Oh, that doesn't count. And the left will call that racist. It's a diet Mountain Dew. But, you know, did any of you see Idiocracy? I have not seen Idiocracy, which I know is embarrassing. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not as embarrassing as not having seen Independence Day. Oh, my God. It's a movie that was sort of totally buried and ignored when it came out. And then everyone decided it was deeply prescient. I think.

of the works that Mike Judge has done, it's totally sort of inconsistent as an actual movie. Like, it's filled with... Well, explain it to me. All I was going to say is that the president, played by Terry Crews, who's like a, I think, like a former pro wrestler and porn star,

That I know, yes. His name is Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho. I always remembered, sort of J.D. Vance reminded me of that moment. Because he kept changing his name? With his Mountain Dew. Or with Mountain Dew. Oh, funny, funny. I hadn't thought of that. But yes. It works both ways. With his Mountain Dew episode. And at one point, President Camacho is giving a speech. And it's something like, Shit. I know she's bad right now.

With all that starving bullshit and the dust storms. And we running out of french fries and burrito coverings. Yeah. And then you see that that's what's on his teleprompter. Like, you know, anyway, sorry, maybe we can't say that. This is a bonus. This is a bonus episode. You can say whatever you want. Yeah, you can say whatever you want. Ross, you can go ahead and can get into the premise of Idiocracy. Michelle must know it's a movie where, you know, the future everyone's gotten stupider. An average man from the present...

Brondo. Brondo has what plants crave. Electrolytes. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is... There you go. It sort of wastes Maya Rudolph, like her role. There's not really a lot going on there. No, I mean, she's very good. I just think that...

It's like an unfinished sketch of a movie more than something fully fledged. The bonus I was going to throw in is that this is what I want as a fictional president. I have a very strong interest in the character of Benedict Arnold. I think he's a really...

Just a fascinating figure. And as we've done sort of various, various American, right, you know, treachery, treacherous like me. But as we've done various history things with the family in New England, he shows up all over the place. There's a great monument. There's a great monument to him at the battle site in Saratoga. It's just his boot because he was wounded in the leg there and they don't want to. Anyway, I want to read a great alternative history.

Quentin Tarantino could do that for you on the big screen. So that's my pitch for a great fictional president not yet created, the alternate early American republic where Benedict Arnold has become president. Okay, I will throw Carlos Abon along those lines, which is my...

fictional president that I want to watch is Allison Janney, who is, in fact, the vice president and the diplomat. So... The Kerry-Russell thing. You want Allison Janney to play the president or do you want Allison Janney to be the president? Because these are slightly different things. You want Benedict Arnold to be the president? In my fictional, in a fictional... Yes, in a fictional. I want to read a fictional story. I want her to be the president.

To play. To play the president. Not the actress. I mean, I love her. I love me some Allison Channing. I just wanted to be clear. Carlos, do you have a fictional preference? Someone who I wish could play a president. Someone like Matthew Rhys, I think, could have a certain intensity. Yeah. Goes from Soviet mole in the Americans to actual president. Yeah. There's a trick.

I like him. I mean, he's just good in kind of anything. And he would have that kind of quiet intensity. But again, not overdoing it like Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. Yeah. You're still bitter about that. Not bitter, just disappointed. Daniel Day-Lewis lived in a custom-made replica of the White House from 1863 for seven months without electricity to prepare for that role. How can you question the performance?

You know, I don't know how how can I? I think that's always goofy. You know, like this is not this is not presidents, but like Robert Skidelsky, the great biographer of John Maynard Keynes, lived Keynes' estate, you know, while he was writing biographies of Keynes. Like you can you can overdo it.

This is a separate bonus episode, but I think biographers are weird. And maybe we could just talk about that at some point. Oh, that is a good episode. I like that. Future bonus content. What's up with biographers? But you like biographies, but not biographers? I just...

That's okay, which is fine. I'm fascinated by the people who are like, this is what I do. I write biographies. I mean, that's an extreme example, but there is this sort of fascinating identification that happens, or the ones who hate their subjects. That's fascinating, too. You know, the Edmund Wilson, the famous Edmund Wilson, you know, failure to deal with Reagan. It's just a lot of interesting stuff going on with biographers. Edmund Morris. I want to know what's up with that. Ross, Edmund Morris. Edmund Morris. What did I say? Edmund Morris.

Edmund Wilson. Oh, yeah. Edmund Wilson's biography of Ronald Reagan was oddly rich in literary criticism, but strangely... I would read that. I would read that. All right. We've reached our ideal. I think we've reached our ideal endpoint. Because you brought up Reagan? Someone should make a joke about Ronald Reagan being our first fictional president, and then we can wrap. The actor who becomes the president who then gets played by actors. Yes, let's do that. It's very meta.

All right. Okay, so we're going to land this there. You can watch all of our recommendations over the holidays and, you know, report back via our listener line. But thanks for joining us. What's something you want to hear on this bonus feed? That's what we need to know, because we just have way too many ideas. Most of them involve aliens, where Ross is concerned. I've been reading Ross's new fantasy novel that he is putting out serially on Substack, so I just want to

Put that out there for those looking for something. What's it called? Please share. Ross. It's called 10,000 Years of Solitude.

Stop it. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's called The Falcon's Children. And yes, we could do a bonus episode about the fantasy genre, I think. I need to read a little more. I'm only like a couple chapters in. But okay. So anyway. It's a slow burn. If you've got something you want us to talk about or a question you want us to answer, you can share it with us in a voicemail by calling 212-556-7440 or...

You can email us at matterofopinion at nytimes.com. Bye, guys. Okay, this is a bonus goodbye for you. Goodbye. Goodbye, Carlos. Goodbye, Michelle. It's been a pleasure. Hail to the chief. We will fight on. We will survive. And we'll see you next week.

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