Action Presidents!

Last weekend I watched the 1997 movie Air Force One for the very first time. Hey, don't judge me! I'm busy! Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to watching a movie.

Anyway, I liked the movie and thought it was a pretty good action flick. Harrison Ford made quite the kick-ass president. That got me to thinking: How come 1990s movies get no-nonsense Action Hero Presidents, while here in the real world we get mealy-mouthed Commanders In Chief who can't even decide what to eat for breakfast?

In Air Force One, Harrison Ford plays President James Marshall, war veteran, chopper pilot and hand-to-hand combat expert. When terrorists take over his plane, does he cave in and agree to their demands? Heck no! He jettisons his escape pod as a decoy, incapacitates ten or twelve heavily armed thugs, gets his staff off the plane (in parachutes!) to safety, sabotages the engines to force them to land, gets shot in the arm and shakes it off, saves his family and ultimately breaks chief bad guy Gary Oldman's neck and tosses his lifeless body out the back of the plane! Then he grabs a zip line and jumps from the crippled Air Force One and into a rescue plane. Now that's a President!

Then in the 1996 movie Independence Day, Bill Pullman plays President Thomas Whitmore, Iraqi War veteran and fighter pilot. When a fleet of alien ships arrives and destroys the White House, does Whitmore surrender to the outer space overlords? Hell no he doesn't! Whitmore sets up shop at Area Freakin' 51 and then leads a damned fighter squadron in an F-16 attack against the alien armada! And wins!

Contrast these awesome movie leaders against the last few we've had out here in the real world. Our recent presidents make Wally Cox look like He-Man.

There's no doubt about it- what this country needs is a good 1990s Movie President to save us!