Editing Wag the Dog (section)

==Plot==
The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the [[Oval Office]] less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top [[spin doctor]], is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] producer Stanley Motss to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls.

When the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] learns of the plot, it sends Agent Young to confront Brean about the hoax. Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his and the CIA's best interests. But when the CIA — in collusion with the president's rival candidate — reports that the war has ended, the media begins to focus back on the president's sexual misconduct scandal. To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania.

Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named "Schumann" is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed. As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean records a song called "Old Shoe", which is pressed onto a [[78 rpm|78 rpm record]], prematurely aged so that listeners will think it was recorded years earlier, and sent to the [[Library of Congress]] to be "found". Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside the White House grounds. Soon, large numbers [[Shoe tossing|begin appearing]] on phone and power lines, and a grassroots movement to bring Schumann home takes hold, completing a successful [[astroturfing]].

When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover he is in fact a criminally insane Army convict. On the way back their plane crashes en route to [[Andrews Air Force Base]]. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien. However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner's daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming he died from wounds sustained during his rescue, and the farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story.

As the President rallies toward  re-election Motss gets frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan of "Don't change horses in mid-stream" rather than to Motss' hard work. Despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life", Motss demands he receive credit for his production and will reveal his involvement unless he gets it. Realizing he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him. A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the president has been successfully re-elected, and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting the fake war is becoming real.