The Writing on the Wall: ‘Death of a President’
Film examines state of the union after the assassination of the head
By Brian Goodman, opinion editor
Posted on September 5, 2006

A few days ago, a quick news check jolted me to the edge of my seat. Underneath a black-and-white picture of President Bush slumped in the arms of Secret Service agents, as the surrounding crowd dives for cover, blared the headline: SHOCK: PRESIDENT BUSH ASSASSINATED IN NEW MOVIE.

The image was an early scene from the  film “Death of a President,” directed by Briton Gabriel Range and premiering Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Designed as a historical documentary, the film chronicles the aftermath of the assassination of President Bush by a Syrian-born U.S. citizen in a Chicago hotel in October 2007.

Love him or hate him, it is remarkably disconcerting to see the final moments of a sitting U.S. president. Of course, this forecasted docu-drama is not pretending to be a crystal ball — though it will be interesting to see if President Bush takes any speaking engagements in Chicago in 13 months. Nor is the film reportedly a Michael Moore-style anti-Bush fantasy as Rush Limbaugh and many of the knee-jerk hacks on the right are dismissing it.

Rather, it is billed as an examination of what would happen if, outside the normal political cycle of elections, the head of a very complicated and changing democracy were removed from office — a question that deserves to be asked. That is what “Death of a President” seeks to examine. In spite of the plot predictability film titles like “Snakes on a Plane” have gotten us used to, this film is not so much about the death of the president as it is about what happens to the war on terror, the country and the world in the aftermath.

More than any other president in the last century, President Bush has seen the office of the presidency change dramatically in the five-and-a-half years he has occupied the Oval Office. Not since FDR and the New Deal has the balance of power changed so much as it has under this president. The president’s controversial signing statements have shifted power dramatically to the executive branch, further exemplified by the war in Iraq. Though Congress alone has the power to declare war, the administration has construed the use of “military action” as carte blanche to conduct an extensive ground war for over three years controlled exclusively by the commander-in-chief.

And not since Truman and the beginning of the Cold War has the international state of affairs changed so much as it has under this president. Truman saw the rise of the Soviet Union and the explosion of fear directed at the bogeyman of “communism.” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has flopped about, fighting little battles here and there without the simplicity and direction communism provided. But now we have “terrorism,” as unclassifiable and frightening an apparition as “communism,” but without the geographic clarity.

Presidents have been killed in office before — most recently John F. Kennedy — and America as we know it did not implode. Yet all of these changes have taken place under the same man, who finds himself as the head of an increasingly consolidated Washington than when he first arrived. Kennedy, for all the charisma of Camelot, was not so lucky.

Our democracy was not designed to be encapsulated in one man, in part because of what would happen if this newly powerful head was removed from the body. And regardless of how the American talking heads dismiss the film, it has the potential to ask real and pertinent questions about the current state of our democracy. And while the White House “will not dignify the movie with a response,” according to the Toronto Sun, one can only hope President Bush is not uncomfortable with the idea of a film looking at the world after his death. After all, his tenure in the Oval Office is the reason such a disconcerting question needs to be asked.

Brian Goodman is a senior communications major. On Thursday, this column will analyze the potential events following the premise of “Death of a President.”