But from the resolute liberal piety of Martin Sheen’sWest Wing paragon of virtue Jed Bartlet to the gung-ho fighter pilot chops of Bill Pullman’s Thomas J Whitmore in Independence Day, they’ve usually represented earnest, competing versions of American self-image, heightened to the point of absurdity.
Robert De Niro is very much playing Robert De Niro’s idea of an exemplary former American president – he invests George Mullen with a sort of wounded, craggy nobility.
Netflix’s ‘Zero Day’ sticks to a long tradition of noble, reassuring figures in charge, from ‘The West Wing’ to ‘Independence Day’.
For all of its ostensibly modern, if slightly rote calling cards – angry shock jocks, lone wolf terrorists, the vulnerability of the interconnected world – Zero Day feels anachronistic, like an exercise in nostalgia.
Given the seriousness with which we’re currently obliged to treat Donald Trump, surely we can’t be expected to extend the same levels of moral respect to any fictional representations?
