Tags
2020, coronavirus, covid-19, idiocracy, luke wilson, mike judge, politics, president camacho, trump
Mike Judge’s 2006 film, Idiocracy, offered a grim take on the future. The United States of 500 years from now, the movie predicted, will be populated by mentally inert people who speak a crude mix of hillbilly and hip-hop.
Idiocracy got it all wrong, of course. Turns out it only took 10 years—not 500—for the country to plunge into utter stupidity. Some of the more shocking scenes from Idiocracy—the crumbling highway infrastructure, the refusal of some people to leave their TVs to even use the bathroom—seem almost quaint now. Even the movie’s commander-in-chief, a former pro wrestler/porn star named President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, is immensely appealing by today’s political standards.
In fact, if Camacho decided to make a run for the Oval Office in 2020, I could totally get behind that. Here are five reasons why Idiocracy’s president, as it turns out, wasn’t so bad:
- He gets out of people’s way and lets them do their jobs. When word gets around that Luke Wilson’s time-traveling character, Joe—a man of average intelligence in 2006—now has the highest IQ on the planet, President Camacho immediately appoints him Secretary of the Interior. He tasks Joe with solving the country’s food shortage—and gives him one week to do it.
- He is a unifying force. President Camacho’s charisma and tendency to fire automatic weapons toward the sky during joint sessions of Congress seemed to have bipartisan appeal among the Americans in Idiocracy. Now more than ever, we could use a president like Camacho who can bring people together.
- He knows he’s not the smartest person in the room. When Joe suggests that the nation’s crops are dying because they are being irrigated with a sports drink called Brawndo, the president heartily supports Joe’s plan to switch to water. Of course, when Brawndo’s stock plummets and mass layoffs ensue, the president sentences Joe to death in a monster truck demolition derby.
- He admits his mistakes. Despite his bravado, President Camacho is not above admitting when he has been wrong—a trait several recent U.S. Presidents seem to have lacked. When the nation’s food supply is rescued by water irrigation, President Camacho enthusiastically gives Joe a full pardon and appoints him vice president.
- He’s good in a crisis. How many presidents can say they kept the United States from starving to death? Camacho may be a former porn star and pro wrestler (as opposed to a certain president who slept with porn stars and starred in the Worldwide Wrestling Foundation), but he proved smart enough to steer the country through a major crisis.I’m willing to bet he can do it again.
