Essay, Research Paper: Dave: A Scandal In The White House

Dave: A Scandal in the White House
The President of the United States is regarded as a leader and a role model to the nation. However, many people associate him with scandal and a bad reputation of dishonesty. Hollywood often portrays the role of the presidency in movies and television shows. Some of these portrayals are fictional, but some are accurate. Dave is a movie, starring Kevin Kline as the President and his double that shows a scandal in the White House. They are trying to show how the American people view the President and his actions. Dave shows the overall role that the President has with some accurate details and some glamorized ones of the presidency.
Dave is a movie in which the Secret Service finds a double for the President who ends up acting as President while the real one is in a coma. Dave Kovich, the acting President, goes from being a person that finds jobs for people to being the President before he realizes what is going on. He assumes the duties of the President until the White House chief of staff, Bob Alexander, takes the scandal too far and Dave fires him. To cover up the scandal without getting caught, Dave pretends to have a stroke in order to switch the real president and allow the real Bill Mitchell to finally die and the Vice President to take over. The Vice President had not taken over before now because Bob Alexander was trying to get him kicked out of office by blaming him for a previous S & L scandal that he and the real President had actually done.
Many of the events in the movie are accurate. The daily actions that Dave has as President show some of the tasks of the presidency. After taking over the job, Dave has to learn the members of the Cabinet and his staff. These are the people that he works with everyday to run the White House and the country, so he has to know who he is working with and what each of them do. He also had to learn about the budget and how to make cuts. He wants to save a bill that will help the homeless get funding, but there is not enough money in the budget. He works with all of the members of the Cabinet to make cuts in each of their departments to make room in the budget for the homeless shelters that he had visited with the First Lady, Sigourney Weaver. Dave is also taught about the branches of government and how the President interacts with each of the branches because he could not pretend to be the President without knowing how the Federal Government works. The movie shows the events that he did in a typical day, such as visiting the homeless shelters, a factory, attending public functions with his wife, and holding press conferences. These real events needed to be portrayed to show the accuracy of the presidency that Hollywood is trying to portray. If the entire movie was fictional, the scandal of having a double for the President would not be believable, and many people would not watch the movie. Many actual Presidents of the United States and their were mentioned. This adds to the accuracy of the details of the role of the President that Dave is now playing.
More of the events in Dave are inaccurate and could never actually happen in real life. Even though most of the routine events of his day were normal and actually occur, the way he became the President could never really happen. There are too many officials and secret service men that would find out what the Press Secretary and Chief of Staff are doing. According to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President would be acting President as soon as the real one went into a coma. The scandal that they pull off to try and frame the Vice President would not be able to keep him from being President in reality. Also, there would never be a person that looks enough like the President to mislead the entire nation in the first place. No one would be able to pose as President for as long as Dave did and have the American people believe the scam. Also, the people behind the scandal of switching the presidents are never caught and punished for their actions. This could never happen with the media today. They are always looking out for a scandal in the White House and they would disclose the truth to the public. There is one person in the movie that noticed the differences in Dave and the real Bill Mitchell and mentioned that he thought it was a conspiracy. However, no one believed him. This would not happen in reality. The people would notice from the beginning if the President was a different man.
There are some events in the movie that make people wonder if the President acts like that or not. The situation between the First Lady and the President in which she knows that he has affairs could be similar to the situation with the Clintons. Mrs. Clinton knows about the President and his affairs, but no one knows if they speak or if they sleep in separate rooms as they do in Dave. This situation is probably to show how the people think of the Presidents that are in these situations. Also, at the beginning of the movie, there is a scene of the real President Mitchell speaking with his Cabinet and telling them that he does not want the bill that they are working on in Congress to pass because he does not care about the homeless shelters. This scene might make the people of the United States wonder if their Presidents are really this heartless behind closed doors and the people never find out.
When the United States first won its independence, the President was regarded as a man of honor, someone that the people looked up to. Now the President is the center of many jokes and is often criticized for his personal actions. Dave shows the criticism that the public gives to the President by making a movie about a scandal. Hollywood is glamorizing the scandals that occur in the White House and making them seem like an everyday occurrence. However, the people involved in the scandal that is originally framed on the Vice President were punished. The White House Chief of Staff, Bob Alexander, holds a press conference to tell the people that the President was involved in the scandal that the Vice President was being framed for. However, right before switching Dave with the real President, the acting Bill Mitchell discloses that Alexander was involved and he is punished. This shows that government officials that break the law are punished. The scandal that had occurred before the events in the movie was discovered and those involved were punished. However, the scandal of switching the president and hiding the real one in a coma is a much bigger deal and was never discovered. This gives people the idea that government officials can get away with some of their actions and this is not right.
Dave shows many real events in the life of the President. However, there are more inaccurate portrayals of the job also. Dave had to take over and pretend to be the President so that the people would not find out, so he had to carry out the normal jobs that the President would. However, the manner in which he became the President would never actually happen. The movie shows a balance of truth and fiction to show the job of the President and what goes on in the White House. However, many people might look at the movie as glamorizing scandals that take place in Washington and that the people fear are happening without them knowing. Hollywood tried to make a movie that shows how people think of the White House and the President, and scandal and lies are often the first thing that people think of.


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