Kevin Kline in Dave: When the pretend president is better than the real thing

Throughout The West Wing’s seven season-run, the character of Toby Ziegler, played by Richard Schiff, would sometimes give in to his self-righteous side. In his defence, he wasn’t always wrong.

One of his most memorable moments was when he confronted President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) with his theory that when the Commander-in-Chief had been in emergency surgery after he was shot at the end of the first season, there was murkiness surrounding who was actually in charge.

Toby bellowed, “I’ll bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that it was Leo, who no one elected! For ninety minutes that night, there was a coup d’etat in this country”.

The American constitution has a precise instrument for the transfer of executive power in the event the president is incapacitated. The 25th amendment was drafted and ratified after John F. Kennedy’s death, and was designed to be used for replacing the president or the vice president.

Unlike in Australia, where prime ministers take themselves off on Hawaiian holidays without telling people they had left someone else in charge, and then trying to cover up that fact, the Americans take this kind of thing a little more seriously.

It’s been a dramatic few weeks in American politics. Before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the news cycle was dominated by questions over Joe Biden’s ability to lead the country through a second term after his poor debate performance, frequent gaffes and mix-ups.

If something were to happen to Biden, if he was cognitively impaired while in office, he wouldn’t be the first.

There remains persistent speculation that Ronald Reagan, who was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years after he left office, had exhibited signs while still president. His son, Ron Reagan, in 2011 claimed there had been growing concerns for his father’s mental acuity, as early as 1984 during a debate against Walter Mondale.

Ron Reagan’s account has been disputed by his brother Michael, a right-wing activist.

What’s not contested is Woodrow Wilson, US president from 1913 until 1921, had a severe stroke in 1919 after a gruelling national speaking tour to promote the League of Nations. It left him paralysed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye. The whole thing was kept secret from not just the public but from the cabinet, congress and staff.

Wilson’s wife, Edith Bolling, effectively ran his government until the end of his term, although she maintained that her husband had performed his presidential duties. History remembers Bolling as the de facto leader.

Perhaps the Wilson incident was the inspiration behind the 1993 movie Dave, starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.

The political dramedy features Kline as Dave, a man who runs a temp agency whose side hustle involves him impersonating the president for small events. He looks exactly like the actual president, Bill Mitchell (also Kline).

A secret service agent named Duane (Ving Rhames) discovers this lookalike and hires him to double for president at an event so Mitchell can sneak off and conduct his affair with one of his assistants (Laura Linney). The philandering Mitchell has a stroke right on top of her and is rushed out of the hotel room to a secret room under the White House.

Mitchell’s chief-of-staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) and communications director Alan Reed (Kevin Dunn) hatch a plan - a highly, highly illegal plan.

Dave is still with Duane, so they’ll just have the impersonator step-in and pretend to be Mitchell for a couple of weeks, or as long as it takes for Bob to discredit the vice president (Ben Kingsley), force him to resign and then have Dave nominate Bob as the replacement.

At which point, Dave will fake a stroke and he’ll be swapped out with the real Mitchell and Bob will take over under the 25th amendment. It’s diabolical, and because the movie is light-hearted, bordering on rom-com, it never treats Bob’s plan with the Manchurian Candidate-level nefariousness it is.

Now, that’s a coup d’etat, and not just for 90 minutes.

Dave is directed by Ivan Reitman, a prolific filmmaker of that era who balanced comedy and drama in the likes of Twins, Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, Legal Eagles and Junior. Dave is similarly super watchable, anchored by Kline’s likeable central performance, backed up by Weaver.

Even now, three decades on, there’s still something recognisably optimistic about Dave’s view of what the political system should be.

Mitchell is not a great president – he’s corrupt and uncaring. The speech we see him give at the start of the film sees him arguing that America was founded for “decent Americans” rather than, say, all Americans. What populist piffle.

In contrast, Dave is for everyone. He’s an everyman with compassion, who believes all are entitled to their dignity.

It is an idealistic view of what the political system could achieve, and philosophically, it doesn’t all hold up, including how the film essentially gives a free pass to Mitchell’s legacy despite proven corruption charges.

Dave belongs to a moment in the 1990s when a lot of American movie presidents were, generally, portrayed as principled people who had courage and leadership. This is the era of Bill Pullman in Independence Day, Harrison Ford in Air Force One and Michael Douglas in An American President.

It wasn’t universal, of course. There was Wag the Dog and Primary Colours, the latter a barely veiled dramatisation of Bill Clinton.

But on the whole, these post-Reagan and pre-9/11 presidential characters, and you have to include The West Wing’s Josiah Bartlet in this cohort, weren’t shady operators engaged in conspiracies.

Dave may not technically have been a president, but he, like his fictional counterparts, could be trusted with the power of their office. By the end of the film, Dave is running for local office as himself.

Presidential portrayals are usually parallel what’s going in the real world. A swathe of paranoid conspiracy thrillers such as Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View hit the market in the 1970s after Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

Just as the post-9/11 era birthed movies and TV shows such as Syriana, State of Play, The Ides of March, Scandal and a remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

Even though there’s a proper conspiracy to steal the presidency in Dave, the tone is not grim and cynical. It’s hopeful that an honest person can come along and make a difference and they can do it within the system.

After the division and tumult of the past decade, what will the next political dramas say about us?