WASHINGTON — As they begin girding for November's midterm elections, Democrats are hoping that the Force will be with them -- and they looked to a Jedi master Tuesday to help them prepare for battle.
"Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas joined House Democratic leaders at a town hall meeting on Capitol Hill to roll out an "innovation agenda" that aims to prepare the next generation of technological entrepreneurs.
But the more than 100 college students in attendance had other questions for the writer-director -- such as the meaning of this line from "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith": "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
"That really came from an original concept written 30 years ago," he said, explaining that the "Star Wars" series was inspired by ancient Rome, the French Revolution and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. "In all of those countries, a democracy fell through nefarious manipulations behind the scenes, and the people didn't seem to mind."
Lucas was seated next to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who was mocked as Darth Nancy in "Election Wars," a "Star Wars" spoof screened by the National Republican Congressional Committee during last week's annual House GOP retreat.
"The most amusing part ... was the fact that after they did the 'Star Wars' parody, they watched a movie called 'March of the Penguins,' " Lucas said, referring to the documentary on emperor penguins' struggle to survive.
When asked to cast lawmakers as "Star Wars" characters, Lucas hesitated. "In the empire, Congress is irrelevant -- they talk, they rant, they rave," he said. "But it doesn't mean anything, because the emperor controls it all."
Pressed to be specific about who the emperor would be, he said, "It's not who you think.
"The emperor works behind Darth Vader," he said to loud laughter and applause, implying that Vice President Dick Cheney would be cast as the behind-the-scenes villain.
In front of a backdrop of brightly colored starbursts and planets, Pelosi called for spending that would keep America competitive in research and development, including efforts to draw more students into math, science and engineering.
"We had a wonderful model with the moonshot," said Rep. George Miller of Martinez, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "President Kennedy not only sent a man to the moon and brought him back safely, but he created a whole infrastructure, the greatest public-private partnership in the history of the world. The fact of the matter is we haven't kept up that investment."
