QUICK QUIZ: You are a billionaire American businessman turned Senator, enormously charismatic and vitally important in your country. You wish to become President of the United States. Do you:
A) leverage your personal wealth and popularity in the Senate to run for President, using your money strategically to create an unstoppable electoral campaign, targeting swing states with large cash outlays in the form of advertising, and spend your way to the Presidency in an era predating campaign finance laws?
OR
B) use your power and influence to take over a small, moderately unsuccessful high-tech crime cartel, use it to hire a shapeshifting assassin to kidnap the President and Vice-President, then have the shapeshifting assassin kill the President and assume his form so he can name you Vice-President, then resign, leaving you as the Presidency? (Note that if this plan fails, you have a backup plan where you don a palette-swapped version of the Prowler’s costume and fight Booster Gold to the death.)
Choose one and explain your answer.
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34 users responded in this post
In his defense, he does live in a world where another billionaire who was strongly concerned about street crime dresses up like a giant rodent and spends hundreds of millions of dollars to assemble an absurd arsenal of weaponry, rather than, say, use his enormous wealth and influence to affect political or economic change that would be far more effective.
Also, there are some real-life American politicians who I can totally see doing this.
It still makes more sense than Sarah Palin’s political career.
He needs a better name.
I’m with BR on this one. Villains thinking illogically is a staple of comics. “I’ve just invented a new super technology! Now, rather than dealing with patents and licensing and establishing a new corporation that would help fund further inventions I’ve imagined by providing me with equipment and assistants, I’ll just go knock over a bank in a town crawling with superheroes. What can go wrong?”
If I was going to rework the Director I’d make him some sort of ultra Libertarian/anti-government type. He doesn’t want to work with the system, because the system is too ingrained and incestuous. He sees the differences between Republicans and Democrats as being the difference between red ants and black ants, and he’s the can of Raid.
Familial politics, elected officials serving for decades, a two-party system that blocks outsiders while serving the same masters. Something has to be done. And if the Director has to heal America by organizing a grass-roots organization of political extremists (mundane and super powered alike), then so be it. The system won’t fix itself.
And maybe the comics actually explored that angle. I don’t know. The write-up above is pretty half-of-one dimensional.
Wait, are you saying Dick Cheny now has to fight Booster Gold to the death?
Joe Biden, John McCain, Al Gore circa 1992, Bob Dole – basically every Senator between 1960 and 2008 – is probably wishing they’d gone with (B).
Senators have an absolutely atrocious track record running for President.
They also have the third most-successful track record besides governors and vice presidents. Y’know who have really hard times running for president? Plumbers
I think you messed up your math and meant 93% instead of 7%, because this is AWESOME.
Then again, being associated in any way, shape, or form with Booster “everything bad about the 80s” Gold is an automatic deduction of coolness.
Because think about it – you have a guy who desires power, and quickly hits that exponential curve of wanting more and more, faster and faster. Makes it into the Senate – but then that puts him ever closer to the most powerful position ever. Except that even if he were to use his significant influence to go about gaining it legitimately, and even IF he could fix the election to be a sure thing – there has to be an election. That could be up to four years away!
It’s like Single White Female but on a grand political scale.
Forget Booster Gold – bring this guy back as a Human Target storyline!
So was this before or after the exact same plot in Marvel?
I’d choose the path that doesn’t involve pretending to care about poor people. I heard they can give you scrofula.
The Mario / Luigi ’88 ticket really just drained votes from Dukakis.
So, wait, he had a super-powered android and no powers of his own, but he dresses up and pretends he can fight welfare mothers? What a waste of a robot minion. This is exactly what’s wrong with politics today.
Um, can I go with option C)?
Option C) is “Steal a mystic artifact that…” No wait that’s been done. Option C) is “Acquire time travel technology and steal gold from past eras to fund your Presidential campaign, and also to kill Jean-Claude Van Damme before he figures out y…” No… Um. Option C): “Claim your opponent has a fake Hawaiin birth certif…” No, that didn’t work…
Clearly this Metropolis liberal Henry Ballard hates America.
If he were a true patriot and real Conservative Republican he would make his immortal psyonic super powered android a simulacra of Ronald Regan, so Regan would ALWAYS be President.
To be fair, the Director was created by a writer whose best villain creations are “White Hulk with Bone Spikes” and “What if Reed Richards went crazy and turned himself into Superman?”
There is no defense against El Director’s Eleventh-Hour Filibuster Elbow Drop!
I’d say it’s more like the difference between termites and moths. The former will wreck your house. The latter is much less damaging to have around than the former, but won’t do anything helpful and has a habit of self-destructing.
Android-Reagan could abolish term limits in the DCU?
Better plan: make a shape-changing android and have it kill and replace every winning presidential candidate for the rest of your life, with you pulling its strings.
Obviously, the Director has skeletons in his closet that would preclude a more traditional run for president; which means he’s either Gary Hart, or any minority pre-2008.
Yes, I must dissent: the Director is AWESOME. The sheer lunacy of it practically propels the story. You don’t need much drama or characterisation or anything much beyond the in-itself-inherently-hilarious idea of a Senator (you can imagine him as anyone, I like to think of John Kerry) packing (E)XTREME amounts of heat in his quest for the presidency. Nothing shall stand in his way!
And, hey, there aren’t enough senators in comics. You think at least ONE would be a mutant by now…
I’d go with option B. It leaves you with more of your dignity intact than electoral politics.
@Rob Brown: well, Mecha Regan of Dark Knight Returns (according to Wikipedia Earth-31) seems to suggest that. It took Lex Luthor to get rid of him.
“And, hey, there aren’t enough senators in comics. You think at least ONE would be a mutant by now…”
Most awesome senator in comics: Matter Eater Lad.
I can’t remember if Barbara Gordon was elected to the House or the Senate.
Wouldn’t it be better to have yourself genetically manipulated so you are a shape changer? And then just kill the President, take his place, and then do it again after every election?
I love the fact that with that portrait he’s still listed as 6’0″, 165lbs. There’s a really skinny guy inside that suit. Either that, or he’s made of balsa wood.
I would totally vote for this guy
How the hell is a Senator’s marital status unknown?
He deserves a 25% if only for the snazzy costume.
B, because I have morals. Also, that costume is bitchin’.
There was that alien senator in pre-JMS Spider-man.
I imagine Option B is what Stephen Colbert would do, if he were a James Bondian supervillain.
Luthor: great president, or greatest president? :p
At first I thought that was the android, but I guess not. I know the law in superhero comics is to make just about everybody muscular, but the artist could at least draw the guy sort of like Dave Cockrum drew Nightcrawler (i.e. with muscles but looking like he would probably be able to pass a drug test).
On the other hand, I just looked at the Prowler’s OHOTMU entry from the 1989 update. It lists him as 5’11/170 lbs, and says he engages in “regular exercise.” Not “intensive regular exercise” like most of the X-Men, not “moderate regular exercise” like some other heroes whose identities I can’t remember at the moment, and not “no regular exercise” like Ben Urich. Just regular ol’ regular exercise and he still has muscles like these. So I dunno.
(Note: In all OHOTMU entries I have ever seen–which is quite a lot, even though it’s nowhere near all of them–Ben Urich’s entry is the only one I’ve come across that lists “no regular exercise. Even Legion‘s entry says that he has the normal human strength of somebody who got no exercise for half his life but has recently begun to engage in moderate regular exercise.)
Oh, c’mon, only one of those answers involves wearing awesome white tights. Not even Obama gets to wear white tights. And pointy boots! Bush didn’t get pointy boots!
Wasn’t the original Black Condor a Senator?
(Checks) Yup, and he got to be one by *stealing someone’s identity*. I think I have a new theory about how the Director thought up his plan.
lilacsigil said:”Oh, c’mon, only one of those answers involves wearing awesome white tights. Not even Obama gets to wear white tights. And pointy boots! Bush didn’t get pointy boots!”
Umm… actually, George Bush did. Often. Click my name for the link.
(I suppose this is better than if George wore the tights…)
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