The buried message of the film, perhaps, is that our political system resembles “American Idol.” … The winner is not necessarily the deserving contestant from an objective point of view, but is the one with the best poll numbers. A candidate from either party will be defeated if he is not entertaining. His intelligence and matters of right or wrong don’t have much to do with it. In this scenario, satire plays the role in politics that Simon Cowell plays on TV.

Roger Ebert