<\/p>\n
The American President<\/em>, Columbia Pictures\u2019s new release starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, is a fairy tale of a romance, but also a film that raises interesting issues about how we think of the Leader of Our Nation.<\/p>\n As I wrote in a column while Clinton was campaigning for the presidency, something shifts when the President of the United States is seen as a man with both recognizable sexual energy and poll-measurable sex appeal.\u00a0 When Clinton was elected, sexual identification with the President became a national phenomenon in a way that was completely unthinkable when George Bush or Ronald Reagan occupied the White House.\u00a0 Women admitted to being attracted to President Bill, even having major crushes on him.\u00a0 Adolescent girls asked him in press conferences whether he wore briefs or boxer shorts.\u00a0 Gennifer Flowers vowed that he “ate pussy like a champ.”\u00a0 Sex was back in the White House in a way that it had not been since the Camelot days of young, dashing Jack Kennedy and his elegant wife, Jackie, not to mention his mistress of mistresses, Marilyn Monroe (although we didn\u2019t find out about that until later).<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Maybe Not So Strange a Bedfellow After All<\/b><\/p>\n Mixing together the notions that accompany the archetype of “head of the nation” and the usually very different notions that accompany the idea of a sexual man affects how we think about both.\u00a0 On the one hand, acknowledging that the President of the United States is, among other things, a sexual human being, has to help us all get a little more comfortable about being sexual human beings ourselves.\u00a0 Thinking of the President of the United States as sexual has to help us take sex out of the realm of the unspeakable into the world of regular everyday reality.\u00a0 As far as I\u2019m concerned, that\u2019s a very good thing indeed.\u00a0 God(dess) knows we could all do with a good solid dose of that kind of sexual normalizing.\u00a0 Indeed, if I were inclined to reduce all my urges to sexual proselytizing to one slogan (a terrible idea, I know), that slogan would probably be “Sex Is.”\u00a0 Meaning:\u00a0 sex simply exists, people, as one vital and important aspect of life, much like working, eating, and breathing.\u00a0 Get it, get over it, accept it, rejoice in it, stop reacting every time you stumble across it as if it were some kind of national emergency.<\/p>\n The flip side, and no less significant, of how the idea of a sexual president affects our take on sex, is how it affects our take on presidency.\u00a0 We seem to have, as part of our national character structure or something, a deep-seated need to turn our national leaders — not to mention celebrities of all kinds — into larger-than-life, superhuman, heroic god-figures.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this requires us to forget or to deny that presidents (and movie stars) are, bottom line, simple mortals like the rest of us, full of gifts and foibles, brilliance and idiocy wisdom and psychopathology.\u00a0 When, inevitably, their simple humanity begins to show around the edges of the superhuman aura we have created for them (with their encouragement, to be sure), we are not only disappointed, but also betrayed, much in the way that every child feels betrayed when they realize that their parents are people rather than myths.<\/p>\n Personally, I like the idea of a leader who allows his (or her) imperfections and frailties to show.\u00a0 I believe very strongly that it is the strongest of people, not the weakest, who are willing to demythify themselves in public, to acknowledge and even celebrate the real paradoxes of being complex human beings, warts and all.\u00a0 These are the people I trust because I can see who they really are and that they don\u2019t need to pretend to be more than they really are.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Electorate-At-Large doesn\u2019t seem to agree with me on this one, although there are signs that the Sometimes Moral and Sometimes Immoral Majority may, at long last, be having some second thoughts about the idea of Designated Mythic Leader.\u00a0 Jimmy Carter still gets my vote for Best President-As-Regular-Human-Being and, as we all know, he got unceremoniously thrown out on his ear for not being heroic enough at a time when the nation desperately needed a hero figure to compensate for Richard Nixon turning out to be such a slime.\u00a0 And so the nation found its hero icon in Ronald Reagan, an irony from which we may never recover.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n I Thought This Column Was Supposed to Be About Sex<\/b><\/p>\n I\u2019m getting to that, trust me.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a saying in my family that if you\u2019re intimidated by someone the thing to do is to imagine them in their underwear, brushing their teeth in the morning, or imagine them sitting on the toilet.\u00a0 The point is that underneath all the glitz, stripped of all the emblems of status and power, we\u2019re all simple human beings with the same basic needs, tending to the same basic logistical and emotional dynamics as we live our lives until such time as the game plays itself out and we each get turned back into most equalizing dirt.<\/p>\n Being the sort of person I am, I have a habit of taking this humbling of the high and mighty one step further.\u00a0 Instead of imagining mythical people shitting or brushing their teeth, I like to imagine them having sex.\u00a0 I like to imagine them in that altered reality of naked vulnerability and potential embarrassment, that realm where the mask of control and direction is most likely to fall off, that territory where the parts of ourselves we like to keep most private are most likely to make themselves known, proprieties and pretenses notwithstanding.<\/p>\n I particularly like doing this with public figures who claim to all sorts of asexual niceness, because just as certainly as they shit and brush their teeth, they do have sex, one way or another — all of them, over and over again — Bill Clinton, George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Pat Robertson, Dianne Feinstein, Shimon Peres, Yasir Arafat, Fidel Castro, Barbara Boxer, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Pope John, the Dalai Lama, Dianne Feinstein, Mother Teresa.<\/p>\n So try this as a little exercise in creative sexual imagination with possible political repercussions:\u00a0 Try imagining Bill Clinton, your president and mine, being sexual.\u00a0 Imagine him being sexual with Hillary, not with Gennifer Flowers, just to leave the non-monogamy distraction out of the picture for the moment.\u00a0 Take the time to imagine this actuality in enough detail that you can feel it, smell it, taste it.<\/p>\n Are they wearing any clothing or are they naked?\u00a0 Are they perfumed and cologned?\u00a0 Is the room lit brightly or dimly, or is it dark?\u00a0 Do they do anything as romantic as lighting candles?\u00a0 How large is their bed (if they\u2019re in bed)?\u00a0 How soft is the mattress?\u00a0 What color are the sheets?\u00a0 Are they cotton, flannel, or satin?\u00a0 What (if anything) do they say to each other as they begin the transition into the sexual world?\u00a0 Do they look each other in the eye?\u00a0 If so, what are kind of look passes between them?\u00a0 Loving appreciation?\u00a0 Resentment?\u00a0 Superficial pleasantry?\u00a0 Boredom?<\/p>\n What does Bill Clinton\u2019s cock look like when it is soft, and when it is hard?\u00a0 How does it feel to Hillary when she takes it in her hand?\u00a0 How does she touch him?\u00a0 How does her touch feel to him?\u00a0 Does Bill like his cock?\u00a0 Is he proud of it, or ashamed?\u00a0 Does he have trouble getting erect when he wants to?\u00a0 Does he come faster than he wants to?\u00a0 Does Hillary like his cock?\u00a0 Does she like that she knows how to get the most powerful man in the world excited?\u00a0 Does<\/em> she know how to get him excited?\u00a0 Does she like sucking his cock?\u00a0 Does she look at him while she does it?\u00a0 Do they laugh?<\/p>\n Does Bill know how to get Hillary excited?\u00a0 What does he think of the texture of her skin, the shape of her breasts, the way her ass feels in his hand, the particular shape and feel of her cunt lips?\u00a0 How does he open her with his fingers?\u00a0 How does he stroke her thigh?\u00a0 How does he touch or suck her nipples?\u00a0 Does she like her nipples to be pulled?\u00a0 Does he like his cock to be slapped?\u00a0 How do they kiss each other, and where?<\/p>\n What sexual noises do they make as they\u2019re getting excited, and when they come?\u00a0 Can the Secret Service agents outside their door hear them?\u00a0 Does Hillary get wet easily?\u00a0 Does she have trouble coming?\u00a0 Does she ever come when his cock is inside her?\u00a0 What is most likely to get her off?\u00a0 Does Bill know what is most likely to get her off?\u00a0 What does Bill think of the taste of her pussy?\u00a0 Does she like him to suck her clit?\u00a0 Does she tell him what she wants him to do?\u00a0 Do her lips and clit get red and swollen when he sucks or licks her or puts his tongue inside her?\u00a0 Does this turn him on?<\/p>\n Does Hillary like it best when they fuck long and slow, or does she like being thrust into fast and hard?\u00a0 Does she like fucking at all?\u00a0 Does Bill?\u00a0 How does Hillary move her hips when Bill is inside her?\u00a0 How does Bill move his?\u00a0 Do they look at each other while they fuck or do they close their eyes?\u00a0 Is he usually on top of her?\u00a0 Does she like to straddle him?\u00a0 Does she turn over and offer herself to him with her ass high in the air because she loves how it makes her feel so vulnerable?\u00a0 Does he offer this sort of vulnerability to her?\u00a0 Do they play with each other\u2019s assholes?\u00a0 Tenderly or fiercely?\u00a0 Do they tell each other their fantasies?\u00a0 Do they ever play them out?\u00a0 Does he fall asleep right after he comes?\u00a0 Does she?<\/p>\n Take some time to think all this through, to conjure up a detailed, intimate picture of the President and the First Lady doing First Sex.\u00a0 Then remember as much of this picture as you can the next time you watch President Bill Clinton address the nation on why we need to send troops to Bosnia, or to not compromise people\u2019s social security benefits.<\/p>\n My guess is that thinking of Bill Clinton as a sexual person with (probably) the same kinds of sexual questions and pleasures as the rest of us will change how you think of him in his presidential role.\u00a0 Maybe it will make you friendlier to him, maybe it will make you more upset with him than ever; I\u2019m really not campaigning for or against him, just trying to bring him (and everyone) down to earth a little.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n About that Film…<\/b><\/p>\n Which is why I\u2019m pleased that a film like The American President<\/em> has come out of Hollywood, and why I\u2019m pleased to know that it is being watched, enthusiastically it seems, by millions of people.\u00a0 (The American President<\/em> grossed a respectable $12.9 million its first week in limited release.\u00a0 The gross grew to $13.1 million the second week, as the film became more widely distributed.\u00a0 To get a little perspective, this puts The American President<\/em> on a par with the very popular Get Shorty<\/em>, an excellent film with much more predictable appeal.\u00a0 Get Shorty<\/em> has grossed $62 million in its first six weeks in release.)<\/p>\n The film, as you probably know by now, is about a president (Andrew Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas) who is both politically and personally very much like Bill Clinton.\u00a0 He is relatively young, dynamic, and liberal.\u00a0 He has a 12-year-old daughter.\u00a0 His main political advisor is unmistakably George Stephanopoulos.\u00a0 For the purpose of supporting the plot\u2019s love story, he is a widower, which is to say he is appropriately available to a new romantic and sexual involvement without raising the distracting bugaboos of martial infidelity.\u00a0 He becomes intrigued with a young woman lobbyist (Sydney Wade, played by Annette Bening), which raises for himself, his staff, his political allies and opponents, and the nation as a whole, all the questions about what it means for the President of the United States to deal with the same sexual and emotional questions as every other middle-aged man who opens himself to a new relationship once an old one has ended.<\/p>\n Columbia Pictures makes no bones about the issues the film raises.\u00a0 “Will the media, the public and his advisors allow Andrew Shepherd to be the President of the country and a single adult man at the same time?” they ask in their press release.\u00a0 Director Rob Reiner\u2019s answer:\u00a0 “The public doesn\u2019t want the President to be a regular man.\u00a0 They want him to be a kind of king, an omnipotent father figure.\u00a0 But he has the same needs as any normal man.”\u00a0 Reiner\u2019s goal is to force the audience to see that simple fact.<\/p>\n In the film — WARNING:\u00a0 PLOT REVELATION IS ABOUT TO BE NECESSARY; SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON\u2019T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS — the Clinton figure deals with his relational and sexual dilemma cautiously but assertively.\u00a0 He romances the object of his desire deliberately and respectfully, insisting to his worried spin doctors that he is a single man and has the right to date a single woman he is attracted to.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, in rather short order he is also sexual with her, without trying to hid this from the scandal-hungry media.\u00a0 By the end of the film we are being asked to believe that by forthrightly proclaiming his right to love and be sexual with the woman he loves, a president can, by dint of emotional and political integrity, overcome the doubts of the electorate and the inevitable distortions of dirt-dealing political opponents — kind of a flashback to Martin Luther King proclaiming “the truth shall make you free.”<\/p>\n A fairy tale for our times, I suppose.\u00a0 And yet James Carville, real President Clinton\u2019s real and realistic campaign manager from 1992, says that he finds the film\u2019s message is very much on the money.\u00a0 “If there were a single president who dated somebody and then fell in love,” says Carville, “I think the country would be very touched and very encouraging.\u00a0 The only people who pull against romance are people in Washington.\u00a0 Everybody else in the world thinks it\u2019s a great thing.”<\/p>\n I wonder whether Carville would extend his sense of public approval from a president dating and falling in love to a president being sexual with a woman after three dates.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as a nation, we don\u2019t seem to feel as rosy about sexual fulfillment outside the institution of marriage as we do about falling in love.\u00a0 But even if the majority of Americans may not be ready to tolerate a married leader who is sexual with someone other than his wife, it\u2019s hard to believe that most people would still expect an unmarried public adult to put off being sexual until marriage.\u00a0 When it comes to this level of sexual tolerance, I think the Christian Right simply loses most of the rest of us and becomes fringe rather than mainstream, much as it does on the question of abortion choice.\u00a0 Sexual ethics have undoubtedly slipped backwards as the moralists rattle their rhetorical and financial chains, but we haven\u2019t slipped all the way back to sexual prehistory (meaning the 50\u2019s).<\/p>\n Whether Carville is right or wrong in his evaluation of the American mood, it is interesting that he chooses to identify publicly with the emotional and sexual acceptance that is at the heart of The American President<\/em>.\u00a0 It is also interesting that, while the film was in production, President Clinton took a similarly friendly posture toward it, inviting director Rob Reiner, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the film\u2019s entire the cast and production design team to the White House several times so they could make the film as realistic as possible.\u00a0 Clinton seems to have decided that, all in all, it is to his advantage to be identified as a regular, emotional, sexual guy by the people at large when they go to the polls in \u201896.<\/p>\n I can see the bumper stickers now:\u00a0 “Keep Sexual Pleasure in the White House — Vote for Bill Clinton.”<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n I See London, I see France…<\/b><\/p>\n This may or may not be the same sort of thing, but did you happen to catch the evening news the night the international press corps went to town looking up Hillary Clinton\u2019s skirt as she sat, knees untogether, at some public function?\u00a0 I about dropped my teeth to see the entire nation reduced (or elevated) to the level of nine-year-old boys, as commentators oohed and aahed and the best camera lenses in the world zoomed in to get a generous eyeful of Hillary\u2019s (white) panties.\u00a0 Clip that shot and blow it up into a poster for college dorm walls!\u00a0 Maybe Bill\u2019s not the only White House resident that\u2019s up for a little national sexual infatuation.<\/p>\n Will seeing Hillary\u2019s panties help us imagine her being sexual with President Bill?\u00a0 Did Bill and Hillary use that clip for added spice when they went to bed that night?\u00a0 “Let\u2019s pretend that I\u2019m a tv cameraman and you\u2019ve decided to make the reception interesting by being naughty and not wearing panties.\u00a0 I can\u2019t believe it when I see that your legs are apart, and then when I zoom in I see these beautiful lips.\u00a0 Somehow you sense that you\u2019re being seen, but you decide not to worry about it.\u00a0 In fact, you open your legs a little wider….”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n December 15, 1995<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1995 David Steinberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n The American President, Columbia Pictures\u2019s new release starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, is a fairy tale of a romance, but also a film that raises interesting issues about how we think of the Leader of Our Nation.<\/p>\n As I wrote in a column while Clinton was campaigning for the presidency, something shifts when 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