President Luthor

ID: Given that America has inaugurated a new President this week, I want to talk about President Luthor.

Superman: You can imagine my elation.

ID: It’s obnoxious having to call a disgraced President that, isn’t it?

S: It was obnoxious ever having to call that disgrace President.

ID: So it’s safe to assume there’s no love lost between the two of you.

S: There was a time when Lex and I were friends; I had a lot of respect for him, and the things he was able to do- the things I thought he would do, for humanity. But he squandered all of that because of a- perceived rivalry between us. Lex’s greatest weakness

ID: His Kryptonite.

S: has always been his ego. It was always about proving he was the greatest, the best, all because his father spent so much of his youth convincing him he was worthless. But at some point, it stopped being the horrible thing that his father did to him, and became the terrible things Lex did to the world, in anger, for revenge, for spite.

ID: So you don’t think there was even a part of Lex that wanted to succeed as President?

S: Oh no- I think most of Lex really wanted to be the best President he could be, to show his father, to show himself. That's always been the rub of Lex, that he doesn't see himself as a bad person- he thinks he's a pragmatist, a hard man making the tough decisions others couldn't or wouldn't. I think deep down Lex really is mostly a good person, and he genuinely sought to help people.

But the core of Lex is rotten; time and again there's a part of him that has looked for the easy way, the expedient if morally gray way, that constantly gets him into trouble. I think on some level Lex campaigned thinking he could remake himself as Presidential, that he could bury all the hateful, insecure things in himself in the earth, hoping they could mature into something good.

ID: Are you comparing Luthor to sauerkraut?

S: I guess I am- or at least, in his conception I am. But I think pushing all those things down only made him worse-, and he eventually did what he always does.

ID: I know the League was actively against him in the campaign, giving more interviews, tacitly allowing his opponents to use your likenesses in ad spots- a few of you even came out and endorsed his opponents. So why do you think the League was unsuccessful in fighting Luthor’s election?

S: One thing Lex has always been good at is deflecting criticism. We opened up all of the League files on Luthor to the press, but he was able to paint us as elitists, and aliens, who didn’t want the people to decide for themselves, but wanted to choose their President for them. He described us as an insidious cadre of celebrities, Barbara Streisand with batarangs, or a flying George Clooney. And since he was running on a platform of technological progress, he lambasted us for not sharing our various advanced technologies with the world.

ID: Let me play devil's advocate for a moment, then...

S: Why haven't we shared our technology? There are two answers, one simple, and one complex.

ID: I'm a simple man.

S: Nuclear technology. Every technology is like a knife, a hundred peaceful uses, but you can use it to hurt people, too. Kryptonian technology is probably a hundred years ahead of human technology. The same goes for Martian. What little we have of Apokalyptian tech might be even more advanced than that. While our tech could revolutionize the world, it could also be used to destroy it. Take a teleporter. It could basically solve world hunger, reduce the cost of shipping cheap medical supplies to disaster areas- a thousand and one uses. Or it could be used to pipe a dirty bomb into the UN.

ID: If that was the simple answer

S: Yeah. The more complicated one is that we aren't engineers- myself, J'onn. We're smart, and we dabble, but we have the tech we came with. We aren't really qualified or outfitted to reproduce the technology en masse. And yes, it's true that we've got people like John Henry Irons working with us, a man far ahead of his time, but we'd need an army of Johns to be able to first reverse-engineer and then reproduce the tech. Luthor basically campaigned on the promise of an iPod with a bigger harddrive; comparatively our tech is a quantum iPod in a droplet of water.

ID: Okay- I'm not sure I entirely agree with your reasoning, there, but there's reasoning, at least (though it might have helped your case to articulate those things during the campaign). But on that note, I heard there were rumors the League considered fronting its own candidate to oppose Luthor.

S: We talked about it. sure. What it really came down to, is, I would have run against him, but I’m an alien. I’ve never been shy about the fact that I’m from another planet, but because I’m not a naturally born citizen- it’s a non-starter.

There were a lot of other names thrown around, Ollie thought about it, but of course Dinah talked him out of it, I think the quote ran, “You’re a loudmouthed idiot who never thinks about what he’s going to say before he’s said it.” Which is mostly right. I mean, he was one of the founding members of the League, but nobody remembers that, because we’d sooner forget that he was there. And I love Ollie. He’s oftentimes the voice of fallible reason, but loud and liberal as he is, he couldn’t get elected in Seattle, let alone nationally.

And Bruce thought about it. Bruce wrestled with it. I think, had everything Bruce came to find out about what Luthor did to Gotham

ID: You mean the earthquake, and the declaration that Gotham was no longer U.S. Territory- that Luthor used his technology and his influence to first cause the disaster and then exacerbate it.

S: Right. A lot of people died because of that, lost their homes, livelihoods. Even before that, Bruce was on the fence. He was willing to pit his fortune, his company, his life, against Luthor, because he understood what letting him become President meant. But what it came down to, was, if anyone started digging, and a Presidential candidate, especially a political unknown like Bruce Wayne, is always going to be vetted, by the media and their opponents, and the moment someone started digging, Bruce’s name was going to come up in connection with Batman, and the League, and probably a thousand quasi-legal things he’d done. He could out-argue Luthor on the issues, he could out-maneuver Luthor politically, he could even afford to outspend Luthor, but the one thing he couldn’t escape was the good he’d done. Still, if he’d known everything Luthor was culpable for- but he didn’t, not in time, anyway. Which is why, after Luthor was elected, Bruce canceled all his contracts with the U.S. Government. He lost billions, personally, and didn’t blink. Luthor attacking Gotham- Bruce took it personally. Unfortunately, Luthor took that personally. He murdered Vesper Fairchild and framed Bruce for it.

And of course, that was only the beginning for Lex. He made a deal with the devil- Darkseid to be specific- though I suppose he’s done that enough times that it’s not being specific enough. He harmed the government and the Presidency in a way that successfully made people forget all about Nixon.

But I guess, if I wanted to make sure people walked away with anything from it, it’s this: it’s admirable to want change. It’s important, and necessary, right, and good. But it’s also necessary to be cautious where that change is coming from, what direction it’s moving in, and the cost, financially, spiritually, and morally. Because whatever incremental progress we made under Luthor, it was not worth what it cost us.

ID: That almost sounds like you're being critical of this new administration.

S: No. Sorry, I'm not Fox News- I don't report disaster or failure until it's actually happened. But there are certainly parallels in their rhetoric. And I don't know Barrack the way I know Lex- and I hope, aside from a taste for the future in their speeches, the men are completely different. But it's a good lesson to keep in mind, especially when a President is a relative unknown, because it's as much the duty of the people as it is of the Congress and Supreme Court to act as a check and balance on a President. We give him a four year grace period, but after that, if he hasn't been true to his word, we find someone better for the job.

We’ll be trying to bring you a new section to the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.