When the film opens, President of the United States Judson C. 'Judd' Hammond (Walter Huston) is variously described as "a Herbert Hoover-like partisan hack"<ref name="Goldberg, 302">Goldberg, 302</ref> or "basically a do-nothing crook, based on, to some extent, Warren G. Harding." Then he causes a near-fatal car crash and goes into a coma. Through what Portland State University instructor (characterized by a breeze blowing through a closed window) Hammond awakens as a decisive man of action.