A plot to create a war to draw attention away from the President's scandal with an underage girl. Sounds like a Hollywood picture, and that's what it becomes in the hands of Conrad Brean. He's an elite political spin doctor who's assigned to task of saving the Presidency after the Commander in Chief made an advance on a Firefly Girl. The best way to cover it up? Simple create a fake war in Albania in order to draw the media's attention away from the President and onto "bigger" matters.
The whole premise seems wild and fictional but the irony is the film strikes a chord of reality as Bill Clinton's sex scandal erupts one year after the film's release and serendipitously there are actual bombings that occur just prior to the Clinton scandal breaking and his impeachment. The point is that there is a reality in the political realm in which these puppeteers such as Conrad Brean operate in order to protect poll numbers and preserve power for the most powerful. Thus the film is asking us to examine the question, "Is politics a greater act of show business than Hollywood?"
When Stanley Motss is murdered by Brean this question within the film is answered. Motss wants the public to know why the President was able to keep his lead in the polls, that it was a fake war he created for Brean and the President. It is the truth that gets ripped out of the heart of the American people. Brean knows that the public don't need the truth to sway them only a bigger story than the one currently being presented to them. This film remains vital to the reality of the insidious nature of partisan media news outlets that sink their teeth into a story in order to increase ratings and thus ad revenues--which gives them leverage over government oversight--making their power greater than it ever should be. Wag the Dog shows us the potential that counter-intelligence is simply political warfare in order to suppress the truth and amplify the agenda of the person and/or party that has the greatest power or leverage.
The nauseating reality this film brings forth is that the only way to move toward true Democracy is for the American people to wake up. And the greatest obstacle to that is the news they are being fed. Many watch in order to belong to a community, others turn of the news because it is nothing more than PR and marketing for the rich and powerful and the rest don't have the time necessary to investigate the truth because they have to earn a living to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Apathy becomes the seed planted in the public as the begin to believe there is nothing that can be done and nothing will change unless someone with power and influence speaks up. Motss tried to, and he was murdered for it. And the government marches on.
