Gabriel Over The White House

Jesse Walker v. David Sirota

Take his chapter on “the cult of the individual,” which carelessly conflates economic individualism with something closer to the leader principle. This allows Sirota to link any imposing charismatic figure, from Michael Jordan to Pat Robertson, with the writer who stands near the center of his personal demonology, the pop philosopher Ayn Rand. Jordan’s Nike ads, Sirota writes, “exalted Jordan as sports’ equivalent of Yahweh”; his personal story fit “every individual-glorifying myth the biggest Ayn Rand fan could ever hope to invent.” There’s a serious point lurking around here, a challenge to the idea that “history is really the story of a few larger-than-life Michael Jordans (or Ronald Reagans, George W. Bushes or Barack Obamas), not mass movements of workmanlike Horace Grants (or local activists).” But Sirota’s eagerness to attribute virtually every ill to the ’80s keeps him from seeing just how far back this worldview goes. “The 1980s may have taught us,” Sirota writes, “that every obstacle can be overcome by emulating this or that Michael Jordan and defeating this or that Jordan nemesis. But there’s no way for one guy to instantaneously block the shot of, say, a 9 percent jobless rate.” That’s true. But if you think celebrity-driven, great-man-hailing politics are a recent development, you should take a look at the 1930s. Depression-era pop culture was filled with films exalting the larger-than-life leader in the Oval Office, complete with a dance number in the 1933 musical Footlight Parade where the chorus combines to form the face of Franklin Roosevelt. Better yet, there’s a short subject from that year called Give a Man a Job, with Jimmy Durante telling potential employers to Just Do It: “If the old name of Roosevelt/makes the old heart throb/you take this message straight from the president/and give a man a job.” The short ends with the camera zooming in on FDR’s portrait. Many of the New Deal’s critics, a diverse crew that ranged from Frank Capra to John Dos Passos, contrasted that authoritarian spirit with the more intimate arena of small businesses and decentralized markets. They saw themselves as individualists not because they longed for a heroic individual to tower over the masses but because they worried the individual was being crushed by the system. (A lot of them also complained about Roosevelt’s abuses of the constitutional separation of powers, just as Sirota does in reference to Bush.

eldredgeem - Gabriel Over the White House

A political hack becomes President during the height of the Depression and undergoes a metamorphosis into an incorruptible statesman after a near-fatal accident.

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Gabriel Over the White House



Newly inaugurated President Judson Hammond is content to live out the next four years exercising a hands-off approach and leaving the problems of Depression America to local authorities. But after a miraculous recovery from an auto accident, Hammond is ready to take on every social ill and neither Congress, gangsters nor the nations of the world will stop him. Written by Erik Gregersen <erik@astro.as.utexas.edu>





(Warning. This Plot Summary contains Spoilers.) Newly elected president Judson Hammond is shown to be a lackey of his party, willing to follow the party line even if it's not in the best interest of the people. Showing off by driving his own car to a political meeting, he crashes at high speed. Comatose, he is not expected to recover. But on regaining consciousness, he is a changed man. Dismissing his cabinet and defying Congress, he assumes near-dictatorial powers in order to cut through red tape and institute sweeping measures to reduce unemployment. He even goes so far as to gently threaten nations owing the United States money from World War I to find a way to repay their debts by reducing their arms races. Having brokered this important safeguard for the world's peace, Hammond is stricken down, his work done. Written by Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.

Gabriel over the White House, a novel of the presidency

Gabriel Over the White House

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