Shooting the President

SHOOTING THE PRESIDENT: THE DEPICTION OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY ON FILM AND TELEVISION FROM JOHN F. KENNEDY TO JOSIAH BARTLET Submitted by Matthew David Barber, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for a degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, September 2009. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. .................................... Abstract This thesis – Shooting the President: Screen Depictions of the American Presidency from John F. Kennedy to Josiah Bartlet – examines the depiction of the presidency in American film and television from 1960 until the present day. In this study I explore the relationships between the presidency and Hollywood, particularly in the context of genre structures. I examine the constructions of specific presidential mythologies based on the real presidencies of Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton and the construction of fictional presidencies in the television series The West Wing. In four sets of case studies, I will chart the changing significance of each president through different genres, looking particularly at how each presidential mythology is affected by the anxieties and fashions of the contemporary political and social world. I also examine the ways in which the appearance of presidentiality is created within each text by various means including set design, the choice of actor, the use of dialogue and the framing of particular characters. The aims of my thesis are to demonstrate how a telegenic style of politics formed during and after the Kennedy presidency can be seen to be both represented and enhanced in genre films and television series. I chart the relationship of this new mediated style of presidency through my case studies as it faces challenges such as Watergate, Clinton’s sex scandals and the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. Finally, I aim to demonstrate through a close reading of the latter seasons of The West Wing how the American public can be seen to be prepared by its popular media for the success of the first black president, Barack Obama. Acknowledgements This thesis took eight years to complete. I began working on it the day before the World Trade Centre towers were attacked and destroyed in September 2001. George W. Bush had only just been elected, Clinton’s biography was three years away, the second season of The West Wing had just come to an end, and Barack Obama was in the middle of serving a second term in the Illinois Senate. Whilst I have been working on my PhD, I’ve got married, bought a house, bought a different house and acquired a rabbit. No one could focus on such a rapidly evolving subject as this without monumental support, advice and assistance. I’d like to thank my supervisor James Lyons for sticking with me despite a few unpromising false starts and for helping me to find focus and structure. Like mine, James’s life has changed dramatically over the last eight years so I’m particularly grateful for his commitment and professionalism. I’d like to thank my colleagues in the administrative department where I have worked part-time to fund the luxury of working on my thesis. In particular I thank Patrick Kennedy, Fiona Kugele, Elke Lackermeier and Neil Abel for not firing me, Claire Keyte, Sam Mather, Beth James and Tom Begbie for putting up with me as a co-secretary and Kendra Brown for supporting me during the last crucial years as a friend and as a boss. Finally I’d like to thank my parents and brother for their advice and patience, particularly my father for endless proofreading. And my wife Becky for sticking with me, for settling down with me, and, hopefully, helping me to know what to do with myself when I’ve finished. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One – Kennedy 35 Chapter Two – Nixon 95 Chapter Three – Clinton 139 Chapter Four – The West Wing 202 Conclusion 255 Screenshots 272 Bibliography 294 Filmography 306 Introduction On 26 September 1960, a major shift occurred in the relationship between the presidency and the screen media as John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon met for the first ever televised presidential debate. The debate was significant in several respects. It was the first real demonstration of the style and media skills of Kennedy, especially compared with Nixon’s corresponding inadequacies: Rick Perlstein describes the implications of the debate on the public perceptions of Kennedy and Nixon as follows: Kennedy styled himself the very incarnation of youth: of action, of charisma, of passion, risk-taking, stylishness and idealism and even heedlessness. Nixon, so recently the fair-haired boy of postwar politics – only four years older than Kennedy! – had let himself become the race’s rumpled old man. At the ballot box it was almost a tie. On television, in retrospect, it looked as if John F. Kennedy had won in a landslide.1 Nixon refused make-up before appearing on television despite having recently spent time in hospital and as such, regardless of the policies and initiatives he was debating, appeared the less vital of the two candidates. By contrast Kennedy, recognising that on television his appearance was of equal, if not greater, importance than his debating skill to his success, used make-up. Before the debate, Kennedy was six points behind in the polls. His success on television paved the way to his (albeit narrow) victory over Nixon. As well as being a watershed moment in Kennedy’s popularity, the first presidential debate was also an important tipping point in the relationship between the medium of television and presidential politics. In historian Iwan Morgan’s words, ‘the first ever presidential debate on 26 September marked the coming of age of television in American politics.’2 The debate was not the first time the worlds of television and presidential politics had met, however. In 1952, Nixon famously appeared on television to defend himself against accusations of financial irregularities. This appearance was notorious in the ways he used his family life as emotional ballast to his speech. The 1960 debate, in contrast, is important in the way that it displays two different approaches to the presidency in competition with one another. Nixon favoured, as he did in 1952, an emotional, textual approach to the debate while Kennedy favoured an 1 approach focused on physical appearance. Stella Bruzzi suggests that the difference between Kennedy and Nixon’s approaches to the debate had a wider, historical impact on the perception of the presidency for decades after: The president’s image is an effective metaphor for the state of the presidency within public consciousness, and the Kennedy-Nixon binary that has come to dominate the representation of American political history exemplifies the essential opposition. Whereas Kennedy’s image symbolises cohesion and stability, Nixon’s more ambivalent image symbolises disunity and instability.3 The contest between Kennedy and Nixon highlights a major shift from the politician as a policy debater to the politician as screen icon, and, in the words of John Hellmann, ‘like a film star, Kennedy became a mirror image of the citizen’s desire, an idealized reflection.’4 The televised meeting between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 was, therefore, a moment that defined a new set of priorities in the sphere of politics, a style of leadership that prioritises image and personality over policy and debate. As Bruzzi notes, the differences between Kennedy and Nixon had a far-reaching historical impact on the national perception of the presidency. Indeed, I argue that particular themes and tensions arising from the contrasts between the two candidates affect screen depictions of the presidency into the 1990s and beyond. The 1960 debate is important in the context of my thesis as it establishes a chronological starting point for a series of themes that recur throughout my analysis of the depictions of the presidency on screen. These themes include the tensions between the public and private worlds of the president, an increasing national desire for the exposure of the details of the presidency, the blurring of the aesthetics of Washington and Hollywood and the effects of fictional reproductions of the presidency on the reality of the political world. The debate and the Kennedy presidency that followed, were important moments that signalled the transition from an old to a new style of presidency. Since the Kennedy presidency, the physical appearance of the president has become an increasingly significant issue. In his analysis of the Kennedy presidential myth, John Hellmann assesses the Kennedy/Nixon debate: 2 How did Kennedy win the debate with Nixon? Again, commentators have agreed on the essential points. First, Kennedy addressed the audience, taking his central campaign theme to the viewer, while Nixon addressed Kennedy, responding “me too” to Kennedy’s central theme before rebutting Kennedy’s specific claims in standard debate fashion. Second, Kennedy simply looked better. He appeared crisp, confident, handsome, earnest and sincere, where Nixon appeared bland, worried, sallow, distracted, and untrustworthy.5 Hellmann’s analysis reveals the importance of the visual image in the success of the Kennedy presidency but also points towards the failure of Nixon in the same context. A frequently repeated comment concerning the 1960 debate is that while Kennedy won in polls taken of the television audience, those who heard the debate on the radio or later read the transcript judged Nixon the winner.6 This view highlights Kennedy’s greater success in managing his appearance, but is also suggestive of the difference between an old and new approach to the presidency.

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