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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Deja Vu at Buckingham Palace
Barack, Mac & Jack Ryan
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 5/21/08

Imagine that opening scene in “Patriot Games” when Jack Ryan assesses the situation and puts his family behind a barricade, then boldly and competently launches his Marine-trained, Academy-graduated body into action to save the Royal Family from IRA terrorist thugs.  It’s not required, dear voter, to envision a 3 a.m. phone call in the White House – merely judge for yourself which candidate before us, of whatever age or gender or race or education or ‘diversity of travel’ around the world, would best be suitable to act like Jack.
 
ACT LIKE JACK – would it be Hillary, or Barack, or Mac?
 
Who would most competently and promptly judge the attack on a royal caravan and assess the moment and jump into action, stop the thugs, take a round to his collarbone and put the dastardly plot into a death spin?

The American voters know in their gut who their guy is, who intrinsically wears a flag pin on his lapel, spiritually as well as actually, displayed there proudly and without parsing, even in the shower, while naked and squat on the toilet seat, while sleeping and eating and passing gas.  Barack needs that lapel pin, despite his refusal most of the time to wear it, espousing some bizarre ‘post-patriotism’ theme that he thinks will fly in these difficult times.
 
We know Hillary won’t act like Jack, or his fine wife – Hillary has had as much disdain for military uniforms as her Billy boy.  Both candidates would be less than one-tenth or one-twentieth or one-hundredth as likely to Act Like Jack as would McCain.
 
Mac is like Jack – he’s had danger all around him, in the air, on that flight deck ablaze with splattering, flaming jet fuel and bombs exploding while steaming at Yankee Station off Vietnam.  Hillary and Barack have no Yankee Station training, not a hint of a suggestion of a sense of what to do if walking before Buckingham Palace when a terror hit is being launched.
 
Jack is in Mac – there’s not even a corpuscle or a muscle of Jack in Hillary or Barack.  No Jack in Barack.  Not a sliver in Hillary. That is all our dear voter need know this coming November balloting day.
 
These are the intrinsic appreciations in the minds of American voters. Mac is Jack. Barack is neither Jack Ryan, nor even Jack Kennedy – less legislative experience, absolutely none in the military.  Hillary is known to harbor [and tolerate others harboring] a seething hatred toward military professionals in the Clinton White House. No Jack in her stack of ‘cred’ and ‘rep’ during the first two decades of national renown.
 
John McCain is no post-patriotism candidate. He’s a man who’s been on the attack, has responded often to crises big and small, often as his Navy duty daily bread aboard that aircraft carrier, putting his body into danger often, many times before his better-known POW days as an involuntary resident of the Hanoi Hilton.  If he were in Jack Ryan’s shoes that Buckingham afternoon, even as the ‘oldster’ on that open, public sidewalk, he’d act quicker and more suitably in a single second than Hillary or Barack could analyze in a weeklong seminar of advice from a hundred learned perfessors.
 
At 3 a.m., or 3 p.m.  
On Yankee Station, or Buckingham Palace, or the Rose Garden.
At his present age, or the age he’ll be the last day he’s in the Oval Office.
 
Mac on the attack, and dealing with attacks, is more Jack in one fingernail than Hillary or Barack will be if they live to be a thousand years old.  For those two lefties, action is a theory; for Mac it’s what he lived and learned and adapted and overcame.  
 
The “Hamburger Hill” motto, a favorite of a Navy gal of some favor, applies to all of Mac’s Life: Adapt – Overcome –Innovate.
 
While bullets fly, bodies die, hopes wither, fire’s fury engulfs the flight deck, triple-A fills the sky during combat missions over “Indian country” and the high-risk carrier landing required after crossing the beach into friendly waters. Mac had to deal with that attack, play the real-life role of that heroic Jack, assess and act every day, and repeat it the next day, when he wasn’t yet thirty years old.
 
Can Hillary or Barack match that?  At 3 a.m., or 3 p.m.?  
 
These are the issues, the values, the stakes – to borrow from Tony Schwartz’s famous, vicious 1964 “Daisy” commercial, the stakes are too important for you to stay home on this coming critical day in November.  Do you want a real-life Jack Ryan as president? Or, at least the closest we have seen on any ballot since Bush-41 was on the ballot?  Or even Dubya: he trained as a combat fighter-interceptor pilot, though never deployed.


And as to ‘re-deploy’: Which candidate should define that convenient democrat bit of wordplay? Mac or Barack or Hillary?  Or, if it comes down to it as the predicted November option: MAC AS JACK, OR BARACK AS JACK?
 
This ain’t no stinkin’ movie, so we can’t relax: When the attack comes, which will be the best Jack to be had in this campaign season?
 
The GOP need only display marginal competence in getting the public to appreciate that bit of analysis.  The question is: Does the GOP have half the skill, or even a tenth of the skill, of a Jack Ryan, to get our Jack into the Oval Office?
 
Mere competence is all that is required – Jack for president.  Accept no substitutions. Can you handle that, GOP? ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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