President George W. Bush (played Josh Brolin)
Even before Oliver Stone made Bush’s life into a movie, his presidency could have had it’s own poster tagline: “This time, it’s personal.” According to the film, Bush’s actions can often be explained by his lifelong conflicting desires to please his father and to outshine him. The young W. is a belligerent drunk who challenges his war-hero dad to a fistfight.
Observing his father’s failed presidential re-election campaign in 1992, he decides that his father lost because he didn’t capture or kill Saddam Hussein when he had the chance, and once he’s elected himself, he gets a chance to avenge and outperform his father during the Iraq War.
Finally, he gets to put his Vietnam-era pilot training in the Texas Air National Guard to good use, donning a flight suit and arriving in a fighter plane aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln for his famous (or, infamous) “Mission Accomplished” speech. The optics are pure Bill Pullman in Independence Day, but emotionally, it’s a moment of vindication for that petulant kid who’d embarrassed the family by getting jailed in New Jersey after getting rowdy at a college football game.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-ss9MKXoc]