D. Wire

So last night at work, similar to what I'm doing right now, I was wasting time on the interweb--time which most certainly would have been better spent finishing up my quasi-academic and fully ridiculous "literary criticism" of Emily Dickinson's fourth fascicle for my senior sem class.

Anyway, as you may know, I've been making my way through the West Wing DVD's (which G&S Mac so graciously sent me). I'm a few episodes into the third season, but that's not really important. What is further unimportant, but more immediate to my thoughts for this post is that I decided to google "D. Wire Newman" to A) see how much of the name I would have to type before the google search window suggested the full search term (it never offered it as a suggestion; apparently D. Wire is one of our less popular former fictional presidents) and B) see what other WW nerds had posted on the Web about him.

For those of you for whom the WW is not a piece of American culture from which you immediately recognize scarce references, D. Wire Newman is a former one-term Democratic president, in fact the last Democrat to hold the White House in the WW World before Bartlet, sometime between 1972 and 1991, according to wikipedia. He is portrayed by James Cromwell, the actor perhaps better known for his roles as Mr. Skolnick in 1984's Revenge of the Nerds , 1987's Revenge of the Nerds, Part II, 1993's Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation, and the 1994 classic Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love; as Jaglom Shrek and later Prime Minister Nayrok in 3 early 1990s episodes of Star Trek:TNG; Hanok in one 1995 episode of Star Trek: DS9; Dr. Zefram Cochrane in the 1996 feature Star Trek: First Contact; Farmer Arthur Hoggett in 1998's Babe: A Pig in the City; and more recently as Dr. Alfred Lanning in 2004's I, Robot; George Sibley in HBO's Six Feet Under; and Phillip Bauer (Jack Bauer's estranged father) in Fox's 24. Of course, his best roles to prepare for his as D. Wire were probably those of President Robert 'Bob' Fowler in 2002's Sum of All Fears; a starring role as Senator Baines in the short-lived TV series Citizen Baines; and, of course, his role as Senator Judson Ross in one of my all-time favorite VHS videos, 1998's Species II . He apparently has made a pretty decent career out of playing character roles of men in authoritative positions, as a quick skim of his career on IMDB reveals he has played, besides the aforementioned president and senators, multiple deputies, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants; reverends and priests; a major general, a prime minister, an ambassador-at-large, multiple judges, two wardens, a lt. general, a bishop, a cardinal, and Lyndon Baines Johnson, among many others. Sorry for that lengthy bio, consult IMDB for a full listing.

Getting nearer to the real point of this post, I note that D. Wire Newman appears in only one episode ("The Stormy President, episode 98, season 5), which features the funeral of former President Owen Lassiter (portrayed by no one--the dead body is never shown, and only his hands are shown in flashback scenes), a hated Republican who went somewhat crazy in his later years, perhaps modeled after Ronald Reagan. D. Wire is among 3 "Presidents" to attend the funeral (besides the late Lassiter). Those are D.Wire, Bartlet, and Glen Allen Walken, portrayed by John Goodman, the former conservative Speaker of the House who became acting president for 2 days when Bartlet declared himself temporarily unfit to run the country after the kidnapping of his daughter, Zoe,while the Vice Presidency was vacant due to John Hoynes's recent resignation after his sex scandal.

Reading the wikipedia page about the episode (not the WW wiki page) prompted me to wiki "Presidential Succession." This led me to a page detailing the order of succession, the history of the law that sets it up, Constitutional concerns about it, and other tasty tidbits. You should check it out. Most interesting, though, was the link it provided to a list of works of fiction regarding United States presidential succession. I found two most intriguing to me out of the list of 25 or so books and movies. The first was the 1972 film The Man, based on the 1964 Irving Wallace novel of the same name. Wikipedia's synopsis for the book is as follows: The Vice President had died of a heart attack, and the office is vacant (the 25th Amendment would not take effect until 1967). The President and the Speaker of the House both die accidentally in Europe, and the President pro tempore of the Senate, an African-American, becomes President. The conservative members of both parties soon find pretexts to impeach him. The plot sounds just so-so. The film apparently departs from this plot to what might be an even more uninteresting an unoriginal one, but the wiki entry states the screenplay was co-written by Rod Serling, which intrigues me. This reassures me that even if the film is horrible (as promised by the synopsis), it will be entertainingly and laughably so.

The most intriguing plot to me is, as you may have suspected, the seemingly most ridiculous as well. Here is the entry verbatim: Deep Six by Clive Cussler (1984): After the presidential yacht, the Eagle, goes missing with the President, Vice President Vincent Margolin, Speaker of the House Alan Moran and President of the Senate pro tempore Marcus Larimar on board, Secretary of State (and now Acting President) Douglas Oates orders a cover-up, with actors playing the President and Vice President while Oates executed executive powers. The President is brainwashed by Soviet forces, and returns to office. However, after his incredibly irrational decision making (including using the armed forces to disperse Congressional meetings to prevent his impeachment) the members of his cabinet orchestrate a kidnapping. The President is successfully impeached, when it becomes apparent that Moran has escaped from the Soviets and Larimer is dead. To ensure that he takes over the Presidency, Moran makes a deal with the Korean shipping company holding the Vice President to have him killed, in exchange for favours. Since the President has been impeached and the Vice President is nowhere to be found, Moran is to be sworn in as President (not merely Acting President.) However, a desperate rescue attempt to save Margolin succeeds, and Moran is denied the Presidency halfway through his swearing-in.

I was somewhat surprised to see that Cussler, whom I have never read but have heard of a lot, would devise such a seemingly ridiculous plot. Perhaps it's one of those that seems ridiculous when you read the synopsis on wikipedia but is way awesome if you read the book. Perhaps. But what surprised and disheartened me more was that no film, apparently, has been adapted from its story. This disappoints me, as I would surely rather watch the plot unfold in 2 or fewer hours instead of reading it in a matter of perhaps several days, weeks, or months. Come on, Hollywood. I mean, for cripe's sake, you made Corky Romano!

So, if this post has intrigued anyone, you should check out all of the HREF'd links in it, or if you've read Deep Six or any of Cussler's works and could provide some insight to its or his other works' ridiculosity, I would be interested in hearing it.

And a piece of barely-related trivia to end: Who is the best-selling novelist in the world (according to wikipedia)?

Answer: Stephen King
**Bonus points for naming his alma mater (without looking it up)

Answer:

The University of Maine