1
Introduction
My Own Private Presidents
The object casts its shadow on the subject.
âChristopher Bollas
This book is about the vernacular use of the American presidency. For the American presidency enters into the every day life of its citizens in myriad ways, both marked and, often, oblique. Presidents figure in the currency we use as we go about our tasks (in contrast to preeuro France, whose currency featured both St. ExupĂ©ryâs Little Prince and Berlioz, and Germany, which put the mathematician K. F. Gauss on the ten-Deutschmark note). Every Presidentâs Day we see the representations of Washington and Lincoln hawking furniture and discounted Chevy Blazers. âGeorge Washingtonâ himself advertises the new one-dollar coin, seemingly nonplussed about his replacement, dancing in a disco or driving through a highway tollbooth (âI look good on paperâ). âAbraham Lincolnâ (played by Martin Short) does a quick star turn for the Biography Channel (âBut I always wanted to be a dancerâ). People increasingly consume biographies and nonfiction books about the presidents in both popular and scholarly versions and read about the difficulties with âplagiarismâ that plague public presidential historians (e.g., Joseph Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin). It is indeed difficult to open the New York Times Sunday Book Review or cable-surf (the History Channel, A&E, the Biography Channel, Turner Classic Movies) without experiencing a âpresidential momentâ even if one is not watching 24, Commander-in-Chief, the Emmy-winning West Wing, or Battlestar Galactica. Commercials for a sleep-inducing pharmaceutical (Rozerem) feature dream sequences starring Lincoln (alongside an astronaut, a talking beaver who accuses Honest Abe of cheating at cards, and a human).
In a younger niche market, there are punk groups (âDead Kennedysâ) and pop recording artists (âThe Presidents of the United Statesâ), and most of my undergraduate students can sing all the words to the âmediocre presidentsâ songâ from The Simpsons. (âWe are the mediocre presidents / You wonât find our faces on dollars and centsâ). Presidents appear in animation cartoons, making cameo appearances on The Simpsons and on Beavis and Butthead. Their real counterparts, both candidates or elected leaders, make the round of the talk shows or do bit parts in Hollywood releases, as Bill Clinton did in Bob Zemeckisâs film Contact. More recently, they appear on reality shows such as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, as Laura Bush did after Hurricane Katrina, or both Bushes on American Idol. Families on vacation at Disneyland, in California, can share some âgreat moments with Mr. Lincoln.â On a recent vacation, one family traveled from Disneyland to visit President Gerald Fordâs body, lying in state at Rancho Mirage. Alternatively, families can drive either to Yorba Linda, where they can select from an array of Nixon-Elvis souvenirs (mugs or watches, the most popular item) at the Nixon Birthplace and Library museum shop, or to Simi Valley, where they can interact in a simulated situation room or push a button and end the Cold War via holographic images of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in a Geneva cabin replete with a fake burning log. Or they can visit one of President Reaganâs brown suits from his Hollywood days. In Orlando, an animatronic Bill Clinton joins the roll call in the Hall of Presidents, situated right next door to the Haunted House at Disney World.1
While the presidency has always served as a subject for the great Hollywood directors and actors (Henry Fonda as Young Mr. Lincoln, Spencer Tracy as aspiring candidate in State of the Union, Gregory Lacavaâs Gabriel over the White House), its presidential monuments, such as Mount Rushmore (North by Northwest), the Jefferson Memorial (Born Yesterday and Hitchcockâs Strangers on a Train), and the Lincoln Memorial (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Tim Burtonâs Planet of the Apes), perform a crucial diegetic function for a plotâs narrative tension. These monuments often appear heroically as metonyms for normative citizenship or, in postmodern fashion, as in The Simpsonsâ âMr. Lisa Goes to Washingtonâ episode, where Lincolnâs âfather functionâ is ironically underlined by a throng of citizens asking Mr. Lincoln such questions as âHow do I get my kids to brush more often?â and âDo you think I should grow a mustache?â2 The Lincoln Memorial serves as a tragic backdrop in Oliver Stoneâs Nixon, or it frames the âinfantile citizenshipâ of Forrest Gumpâs address at the March on Washington, a film that splices in actual presidential footage (in Zelig fashion) within a traditional fictional narrative.3
Lincoln has functioned as well in avant-garde performance pieces, colorized in blackface in Holiday Inn, impersonated by African American actors and women (a recent performance piece begins with a woman draped alongside a black Lincoln Continental, only to have a âcar crashâ into history and survive in the form of a âfemale Lincolnâ!). There are âLincoln impersonation conventionsâ where an array of Lincolns and other people in period dress chant âReady and Abe-L.â4 Lincoln also enters, in a very displaced way, in Ben Stillerâs Zoolander, in which a male-model conspiracy theory of presidential assassinations is proposed, with John Wilkes Booth characterized as a âmale model.â (Oswald wasnât a male model, but a viewer is shown some footage and asked to check out âthose two guys on the grassy knollâ who are filmed in postures reminiscent of GQ and Esquire layouts.) The assassination is fodder for a Sondheim musical, Assassins, and going to that musical is part of Sarah Vowellâs best-selling Assassination Vacation. Most recently, Lincoln appears as a depressive in the biography by (and marketing of) Joshua Wolf Shenkâs Lincolnâs Melancholy: How Depression Fueled His Greatness and in the History Channelâs two-hour documentary derived in part from the book (and is also presented as potentially âqueerâ for his intense homosocial friendship with Joshua Speed). A review by the New York Times theater critic Patricia Cohen asks: âCan the generally disappointing crop of national leaders today be attributed to the Prozac generationâs addiction to cheeriness . . .? The emotionally suffering artist stokes our imagination, the emotionally suffering politician evokes panic; who wants to think about Eeyore nose to nose with bin Laden?â5 Doris Kearns Goodwinâs popular Team of Rivals fuels speculation about improbable fusion tickets in the 2008 presidential race, such as a McCain-Clinton pairing. Lincoln becomes a talking-point comparison after George W. Bushâs ânewâ Iraqi surge policy (like Lincoln, he had to change some generals). This meets up with its hilarious Daily Show counterpart, a found recording of Lincoln mangling âA house dividedâ (âYou canât stand in a divided houseâ) to illustrate yet another similarity between W-Bush and Lincoln.
The Kennedy assassination itself could supply material for several books about the vernacular use of the presidency. From the more literary ânovelizationsâ such as James Ellroyâs American Tabloid or Don De-Lilloâs Libra, to Oliver Stoneâs film JFK, the assassination itself, as well as its dispersive metonyms and part-objectsâDealey Plaza (site for the ending of DeLilloâs first piece, Americana) to Jackieâs pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat (forever emblematized in The House of Yes, where a reenactment of the motorcade scene and shooting serves as a prelude to acts of brother-sister incest and repetitive family trauma), pervade popular culture. In David Cronenbergâs Crash, a protagonist, Vaughn, suggests that the Kennedy assassination is just another iconic car crash, along with those of James Dean (DeLillo sees Oswald as a poor manâs James Dean), Jayne Mansfield, and Albert Camus. These mergers of national history and family or personal trauma are increasingly played out during the Clinton presidency films (even in comic ones like Dick that ostensibly treat other presidents), such as Absolute Power, Murder at 1600, and The Contender. Moreover, we might locate a Lewinsky affair legacy in the increasingly forensic view of the White House, in particular, in the siting of the Oval Office as crime scene, and in the beginnings of the procedural or reality TV shows that have displaced earlier detective genres. For the Lewinsky affair did demonstrate, as shows like CSI do so ably, that âtruthâ resides outside consciousness/cognition in the forensic objectâthe blue dress or the bloody glove, to cite just two Clinton-era relics. There is even some speculation that the popularization of the Lewinsky affair made the revelation of the Catholic Church abuse scandals easier because of the Clinton scandalâs matter-of-fact presentations about oral sex.
The Clinton presidency marked an intensification of these cultural trends in more conventional ways, as well. Michael Roginâs insightful reading of Independence Day discusses not only how the film entered the 1996 campaign (where both Clinton and Dole felt obliged to âendorseâ it) but its most popular trailer, which shows the blowing up of the White House.6 Tim Burtonâs Mars Attacks! covers much the same territory; alien invaders destroy most of monumental Washington, with a president played by Jack Nicholson and Glenn Close as first lady (dressed in Nancy Reagan red). The president became an action hero to identify with when Harrison Ford took on the role (in Air Force One, Clintonâs personal favorite). Clinton claimed that the best perk of being president was not Air Force One or Camp David but the inhouse movie theater. Bill Pullman (in ID4) forgot his constitutional role and flew an airplane himself to defeat the aliens. W-Bushâs âMission Accomplishedâ photo op on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln mimics Pullmanâs presidential performance.7 Great comic actors such as Jack Lemmon and James Garner played unwitting ex-presidential heroes in My Fellow Americans. Kevin Kline played a convincing (GHW) Bush-style president in Dave and exposed corruption in the executive branch while his friend Charles Grodin, as Murray the accountant, balanced the budget. John Travolta convincingly portrayed Clinton, fictionalized as Jack Stanton, in Primary Colors, and Jeff Bridges was in many ways an even more compelling Clinton in The Contender. Gene Hackman was the president in Absolute Power, promoted from his cabinet position in No Way Out. Clint Eastwood didnât get to be the president but was at least in the Secret Service in In the Line of Fire. Morgan Freeman comforted the nation in the comet-disaster film Deep Impact. Of all the demographically viable popular Hollywood actors, perhaps only Mel Gibson did not get a presidential role (although it could be argued that he did pave the way historically in The Patriot or that he was preparing to appeal to a âhigher authorityâ in the W-Bush years with his Passion of the Christ).
At other times, the merger of Hollywood and Washington could be dizzying. Marilyn Monroeâs singing of âHappy Birthday, Mr. Presidentâ is endlessly circulated in biographies of Marilyn, of JFK, of Jackie, and of the Rat Pack (the Peter Lawford connection). It is decontextualized and recontextualized in an eerie impersonation by Drew Barrymore on the cover of John F. Kennedy Jr.âs George magazine. And, to return to my opening example, an ad for a car-leasing deal on Presidentâs Day 2001 claimed that the offer was democratically available, even to those who werenât âbig shotsâ like the president: âYou donât have to be a Washington or Lincoln to get the presidential treatment and there is no residency requirementâ (intimations of Hillary Clintonâs Senate campaignâwhere the ad also appearedâin 2000). Even the Florida recount after the 2000 presidential election became grist for the mill, as in the Doritos Chip inspector ad where chips, substituting for ballots, are held up to a light while the inspector says, âIâve lost count.â Bob Doleâs public-service (erectile dysfunction) ad for Viagra is indexed in his Viagra-inflected Pepsi ad shown during the 2001 Superbowl, in which he extols his âlittle blue companionâ and seems to be having a lot more fun on the beach than he did in the original public-service announcement/ad, in which he was shown alone in his office with an American flag. Bob Dole made his first Viagra disclosure on Larry King Live, and, again in 2001, a NASCAR with the Viagra logo is shown racing around a track and then stopping, the driver opens the door, takes off his protective helmet, and asks, âWho were you expectingâBob Dole?â One can argue that W-Bush did a lot of product placement in his appearances for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The ubiquity of these examples is not just a recent effect of a celebrity culture or some epiphenomena of infotainment.
Scholars such as Murray Edelman, Barbara Hinckley, Jeff Tulis, and Anne Norton have noted the specifically rhetorical or symbolic aspects of the American presidency.8 Norton quotes Alexis de Tocqueville to the effect that the presidency is a semiotic function and links its signifying forms to practices of everyday life, from shopping and eating to popular court and lawyer television series. My presentation of the American presidents in this introduction focuses less on representative or semiotic (signifying) functions (which are addressed at length in chapters 2, 3, 5, and 7) than on their position as a site for an existential or experiential form of knowledge. In other words, one of the implicit claims I develop is that the dialogue between president and citizen is an operational as well as a representational form of knowledge.
When a major novelist like DeLillo in Libra speaks to us as Oswald, or a debutant author like Lydia Millet, in her more frivolous George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, stages an erotic transference, or a Pulitzer Prizeâwinning biographer such as Edmund Morris in Dutch casts himself in a Reagan presidential primal scene, these are self-conscious and publicized aspects of the daily use we make of our presidents, living and former. This âuseâ is often not conscious. Its logic is not necessarily linear and may be diffusely associative (what Deleuze might call rhizomatic),9 but it can perhaps be best designated by what Donald Winnicott calls a transitional object and Christopher Bollas a transformational object.10
For Winnicott, transitional phenomena, both objects and spaces, ârefer to a dimension of living that belongs neither to internal nor external reality; rather it is the place that both connects and separates inner and outer.â11 Transitional objects and spaces are places of cultural experience, invention, and creative play, developmentally necessary for symbolization. In other words, in addition to a personâs intersubjective relations and intrapsychic world, âwhich can be rich or poor and can be at peace or in a state of war,â there is an intermediate (or third) area of expertise to which both inner and outer worlds contribute: âIt is an area which is not challenged, because no claim is made on its behalf except that it shall exist as a resting-place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated.â12 The transitional object marks an important step in psychoanalytic theory between object-relating and use of an object; âfrom an observerâs point of view it is an aspect ...