I was rewatching the Aaron Sorkin-penned The American President a few nights ago. Despite its liberal leanings, I must admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for it. In any case, I enjoy it more because it doesn’t actually show anything that happened after President Sheppard (played by Michael Douglas) makes his little speech at the end in which he, among other things, vows to, “go door to door,” and, “get the guns.” Frankly, I suspect that any President making a speech such as that (in the same speech he also advocates the burning of the American flag, calls on his likely opponent to join the ACLU, and calls for a 20% reduction in all Fossil Fuel emissions) would probably be either impeached or assassinated in short order. In any case, I like to imagine the likely pasting that President Sheppard would receive the following November from the ‘Evil Republican™’ Senator running against him.

The interesting thing about the ending of The American President (and, for that matter, those of other recent American political films) is the insight it provides into how liberals think. Consider it for a moment. What fictional political films have been produced in recent years? Rod Lurie’s The Contender, Chris Rock’s Head of State, and Warren Beatty’s Bulworth (there’s also Primary Colors, but I’m going to ignore that, as it was largely based on actual events). What is the theme of each of these films? To put it simply: the American people are all actually liberals, and the only thing preventing them from expressing their liberalism is the stubborn (and inexplicable) refusal of Democratic candidates to place themselves in the Michael Moore/Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party.

If Bill Clinton was the candidate of the actual people in Hollywood then Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III is the candidate of the images that Hollywood created. One thing that has gone almost totally unremarked upon (an internet search finds a reference by myself and exactly two other stories that even mention it) is that Dean’s campaign slogan, “Dean for America” is obviously cribbed from a 2001 episode of the Aaron Sorkin-penned The West Wing, in which we find out that the campaign slogan of the fictional President Jed Bartlet was “Bartlet for America” (in fact, it’s the title of the episode).

Now I realize that most people would dismiss this as insignificant. I disagree: it says a lot about who Howard Dean wants to be and how his followers see him. This is one of the reasons why the Dean campaign has proved so resilient to bad news: the Deaniacs are operating on the false premise that, if only Americans knew what liberals really believe, they would elect them by overwhelming majorities when, in fact, the truth is much closer to how Ann Coulter has put it in the past: if the American people knew the truth about what liberals believe, they’d probably boil them in oil.

The Deaniacs think that the only reason that other Presidential candidates haven’t gone into the South and told them to stop voting on, “race, God, guns, and gays,” is that they’re cowards when, in fact, the reason is that most Democratic candidates have common sense, something that Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III, for all of his fancy name, seems to lack.

Dean followers might claim that they’ll vote for “anyone but Bush” in the end, but I don’t really believe them. The Dean campaign has taken on the lustre of a crusade: they ain’t going to be stopping until either they win, or are smashed utterly. What I think that the entire ‘Dean/Bartlet for America’ thing reveals best is this: the Dean campaign isn’t really about Howard Dean.

Dean is a vessel for their dreams. Dean is President Bartlet, or President Sheppard, or any of the other liberal Presidents that they’ve seen on screen. They hold a vision, shared by many of the less insightful people on the left, that America is a nation of basically liberal people who are continually tricked by ‘fundamentalist preachers’, the NRA and Evil™ Corporations. Because of this, they believe that all that is required is for someone to come along (like Chris Rock’s character in Head of State) and shout left-wing dogma at them from a national stage.

Frankly, I’m hoping that Dean gets the Democratic nomination, most of all because I’m looking forward to reading Democratic Underground that night. Given the way that they reacted over there after the 2002 Mid-Terms and the California Recall, I suspect that half of them will be posting their suicide notes and letting fly from their windows about ten minutes after the election is called for Bush.