My Air Force One

So I'm on my third consecutive sick day right now, and I've had a lot of time to do nothing. I'm now caught up on all the TV shows I like, plus, with the exception of 3 episodes, I went through the entire series of Entourage (to date) on the recommendation of DeluxX.

I also finally got to see Air Force One, the 1997 Harrison Ford thriller that my parents wouldn't let me see when it came out. It felt good. Take that, Mom! Only took me 11 years to thwart that particular "no."

I now have the syndrome Jim Gaffigan identified in his comedy, in which I just saw a movie everyone else I know (with any interest in it) saw years ago. "But I wanna talk about it now!" Thank you, blogosphere!

President Marshall is totally badass. And it got me thinking, how would other presidents, real and fictional, perform in the situation? First thing I did was start with George Washington. Then I realized his first reaction would have been, "Why am I in a giant metal box and what's with all these bright things that have no fire?" THEN I decided to NOT start with George Washington.

I don't think W would do too well in a hijacking. He'd just take the escape pod. That said, no one in their right mind would hijack W's plane to get a general released from another country's prison. World leaders don't really care what he has to say.

That said, it does beg the question: why bother hijacking Air Force One in the first place? It's much easier to break a guy out of any jail in the world than to hijack Air Force One. Seriously, the 10 most secure prisons in the world combined wouldn't come close to the security that surrounds the President of the United States (I'm talking about quality and difficulty to penetrate, not number of guards or total firepower).

OK, so acknowledging the movie plot is pretty stupid, I went from the current president to my favorite fictional president, President Bartlet from the West Wing. It wasn't a hard leap since they shared so many cast members (CIA Agent Eric Frost/National Security Advisor; Judge Evelyn Baker Lang/Vice President; Senator Hunt/AG; even that guy trying to write a constitution/that thug hijacker). I'm a huge fan of economists, but I don't think even Jed Bartlet would have done much good on that plane. That said, he had a much smarter staff and more capable security.

Speaking of West Wing parallels, it was interesting the way both that series and the movie dealt with the question of how to make federal decisions without an alive but absent president.

I think maybe Obama would have done the worst in that situation, but mostly by virtue of the fact that he has no military experience and has TWO young daughters, which means the hijackers could...hm...I was about to say "shoot one and still have a hostage" (in comparison to President Marshall who, in the movie, has only one daughter)...but then I thought to myself "Wow, if I blog that, will the CIA or NSA or FBI come knocking? Will it be seen as a threat against the president-elect and be investigated by the secret service? Will it prevent me from ever getting a job with the federal government?" I think I'd be in the clear, mostly because nobody actually READS this blog, but at the same time I think it's a sad state of affairs for free speech when I have to worry about such things while writing a hypothetical in which I compare how real and fictional presidents would fare if inserted into a horrible movie plot (by which I mean the plot was horrible and full of holes, I actually liked the movie).

Speaking of horrible plot points, though, how dumb do you have to be to give a press conference announcing that Air Force One has been hijacked? Back to the West Wing for a minute, they didn't even let a peep slip to the public when the landing gear indicator light went out on Air Force One, which is much closer to how anyone with a brain would actually behave in the real world. You don't ANNOUNCE to an entire world full of enemies that the president's plane has been hijacked, refuse to answer any questions about him except to say "he's still president" (but obviously not present), and then walk off. Seriously, if the people who run White Houses actually think at that level, I'd be a shoe-in for Obama's Communications Director (if the feds are reading, I'm available if you want to offer me a job as a senior counselor to the president).

Finally, I don't think I'd do very will in such a situation, personally. But that's mostly because I get motion sick.

Well, glad I got that off my chest. What did people do when they wanted to talk about a movie everyone else had seen years ago before there was blogging?