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Bush on FilmHollywood's eight-year romance with the 43rd president.

By Elbert VenturaPosted Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008, at 6:57 AM ET

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Oliver Stone's W. is that rarest of spectacles: a fiction film depicting a sitting president. By one count, there had been only two movies depicting a current head of state before Bush came to office: Mission to Moscow (1943), featuring FDR, and PT-109 (1963), which placed JFK at the center of his own war epic. But whatever reluctance Hollywood had about rendering the president disappeared when Bush came to Washington. Stone's W. represents the culmination of a fascinating cycle of movies and television shows that star, in one way or another, the 43^rd president.

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Timothy Noah looked at the ethical problem behind Journeys With George. David Edelstein reviewed Primary Colors as one of the biggest hatchet jobs ever aimed at a sitting president, and Charles Taylor analyzed what insight the same movie provides into the Hillary Clinton campaign. Christopher Hitchens condemned the lies behind Fahrenheit 9/11. Jacob Weisberg explained why Hollywood and Washington have always taken inspiration from each other, and David Greenberg described how Emile De Antonio was Nixon's Michael Moore.

The general intent of these depictions has been to cut Bush down to size, but there's an argument to be made that pop culture has not been up to the task of representing this president's momentous tenure. Our image of Bush via the movies has been stunted—he's a goofball, a bumbler, an amiable frat boy. In the days before 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina, that irreverent caricature may have sufficed. But just this summer we were subjected to the sight of Harold and Kumar toking up giddily with W.—this from a movie with the word Guantanamo in its title. As the weight of his eight years becomes fully felt in the slumping present, the question needs to be asked: Is Bush the buffoon the best Hollywood can do?