All things considered, Dreamworks has selected a fortuitous release date for their film. The Contender opens less than four weeks before November's presidential election and at a date close enough to President Clinton's impeachment trial for the issues of responsibility, respect and accountability to still ring brilliantly clear in the minds of American citizens. Hopefully this film will succeed in reminding us that beside the ingenuity to solve the Medicare crisis and the ability to pronounce Kostunica properly, Americans want a candidate who will restore the respectability to the White House.

The tagline for The Contender reads, "Sometimes you can assassinate a leader without firing a shot." President Clinton may not have fired a gun and he may not have crushed an aspiring politician, but he did disgrace the nation and, frankly, massacre the virtue and the dignity of the Oval Office. May the next President of the United States serve our country well as a model leader and, more importantly, a model citizen.

Jordana R. Lewis '02 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.