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Josh Clanton (The President) is the President of the United States as of 2023 in Perfect Dark. In the course of the game, NSA's corrupt director Trent Easton and fellow conspirators attempt to kidnap, assassinate, and replace him with a clone that they can control in order to acquire the Pelagic II due to the President's refusal to turn the ship over to dataDyne, and therefore must be rescued by Joanna Dark.

In-Game Description[]

Mission11 11-1

The President as seen the the original N64 version

Name: The U.S. President

Age: 50 years

Race: Human (male)

A highly educated, shrewd African American who is trying to do what is right but is surrounded by people like Trent Easton. He believes he has Trent under control after refusing the request for the loan of the Pelagic II to the dataDyne Corp. Perceived as being easily led by the majority of political commentators, which is perhaps unfair.


Role in Plot[]

The President made his debut on Air Force One.

He officially declined the NSA's, specifically Trent Easton's, numerous requests for the government's deep-sea exploration vessel, Pelagic II. However, he is unaware of the conspiracy of dataDyne and the Skedar prior to this mission. He is also unbeknownst that Joanna Dark has secretly boarded the plane, masquerading as one of the cabin crew.

When she eventually entered the President's cabin, the political man at first didn't believe her words until she showed him the evidence of the meeting that she recorded with the CamSpy during the G5 Building operation.

Convinced of dataDyne's criminal plot, the President agreed to allow Joanna to evacuate him off the plane, but Trent's men and the Skedar were swift to take matters into their own hands. The rouge NSA called in a Skedar Transport to dispatch teams to kidnap and eliminate him, in a terrorist attack. Aided by the President's security teams, Joanna was able to get the President to his escape pod before dealing with Easton's men.

The pod landed on a remote island off the coast of Canada; The same island on which the Air Force One, the Skedar Transport, and Elvis' ship all crashed landed upon. The President was quickly captured and held captive by Trent Easton while his men began searching the wilderness for Joanna, but that didn't stop the secret agent who managed to find the two hiding out in a cave. Trent escaped, leaving the President to her care. They then stayed with Elvis and his ship until the Carrington Institute's rescue team arrived. Soon after, Trent ultimately meets his end by Mr. Blonde due to his failures.

With the President back at the White House, he and the Maian Delegation would be expecting the Institute for an honorary hearing and official government backing to its efforts against dataDyne and the Skedar, by saving the Earth.

Trivia[]

  • At the time of Perfect Dark's original N64 release in 2000, the game's President was then only a parody of the often-used fictional concept of a black United States president, and in real-life, Bill Clinton was in office. Eight years after the game was released, Barack Obama became the first real-life African American president, and because it now became a reality, Perfect Dark's fictional president was looked back on by fans as a sort of prophetic doppelganger (the two share some vocal accents and personality traits). Note that Perfect Dark's setting takes place in 2023, while Obama retired from office in 2016, and the current president - Joe Biden (the vice president when Obama was president), was in office in real-life's 2023.
  • The President in Perfect Dark was named one of GamesRadar's Top 7 Fictional Presidents.
  • At the age of 50, the President is rather younger by real-life standards of the United States Presidents' age in office.
  • In the G5 Building mission, during the meeting with fellow conspirators Cassandra De Vries and Mr. Blonde, Trent Easton claims he needs a tissue sample of the President. It is later revealed in Crash Site that dataDyne created a clone that is intended to replace him under their control after they fully usurp the actual President. This clone can be distinguished by the impostor wearing light blue overalls rather than a black tuxedo, and it is required to be destroyed as an objective in this mission. He is hidden in a cave with several Mr. Blonde guards safeguarding him. Like the real President, the clone is unarmed, therefore he is an easy target for Joanna.[1][2]
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