Potomac Jungle

An ailing U.S. president fights to keep his job in this tedious and implausible potboiler. Suffering from a bad heart and a faltering memory, President H. Stephen Thompson worries his top people, including v-p Clifford Hawley, in line to take over if the cabinet invokes an amendment to kick out Thompson. Hawley, however, has an active sex life that, years before, involved the woman who later married the widowed Thompson. The president, upon learning the secret from a helpful son, is aggrieved enough to drop Hawley from his party's ticket weeks before the convention. Meanwhile, the U.S. is about to win its arms negotiations with the Soviets by demonstrating a new way of pinpointing the location of submarines. But this potentially engaging subplot functions only to prove that Thompson is unable to make a decision. Ensuing events fail to build either suspense or sympathy for Levy's ( The Gods of Foxcroft ) two-dimensional characters. 40,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo. (July)