A campaign consultant (Robert DeNiro) is brought in by an incumbent president’s campaign to try and stave off damage from a sex scandal involving him and an underage girl in the Oval Office, news of which breaks less than a fortnight before his reelection. The seasoned PR man brings in a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to create a “showbiz” distraction… by conjuring up a nonexistent war.
Hoffman: (incredulous) “You want me to produce your war?”
DeNiro: (matter-of-fact) “Think of it as a pageant.”
It is almost too scary to contemplate just how plausible this really is – in what is undoubtedly the best political satire since Dr. Strangelove. The spooky thing is that this film was released in December, 1997 — the month before life imitated when art when Pres. Clinton went on national television, wagged a finger, and solemnly averred: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!”
