Baltimore’s own Barry Levinson has been making the media rounds to promote his latest film “Man of the Year,” starring Robin Williams. Williams plays Tom Dobbs, a comedian with a show similar to “The Daily Show with John Stewart,” who runs for president as a joke and ends up winning.

Television talkers love this sort of thing because it brings together the two things they love to talk about most — show business and politics — which, as the old but true cliché goes, is simply show business for ugly people.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” recently, Williams acted like he always does, proving that Matthews is not in fact the most off-putting motor mouth working. Levinson was able to get a few words in, explaining that he wrote and directed the film to explore how the political process could be affected by a candidate who didn’t have to raise money from lobbyists.

It’s not exactly the most original political idea to come out of Hollywood. “Dave” (1993) also had an ordinary guy become president and then go on to balance the budget by ignoring advisers and hiring his accountant to crunch the numbers. It was at least mildly funny and not at all smug, mostly because it starred Kevin Kline, who is actually a good comedic actor.

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I wanted to see “Man of the Year” to see if it was as bad as its own advertising made it look, but I didn’t want to pay for it. So I sneaked into it after watching the movie I had actually paid to see: Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” which is, by the way, far and away the best film I’ve seen this year.

That’s why I missed the first 15 minutes of “Man of the Year,” but I don’t think anything could have happened during that time that would make this a good movie.

For all his supposed independence, the fictional Dobbs talks just like a run-of-the-mill liberal Democrat. With Williams hamming it up, he may as well be U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont, D-Conn., on methamphetamines.

Dobbs wins, but only because of a glitch in the touch-screen voting machines provided by a company clearly meant to represent the real-life Diebold, the firm many kooks think stole Ohio for President Bush in 2004.

The wonderful Laura Linney has the misfortune of playing the programmer who discovers the glitch and is thus thrust into a ridiculous conspiracy plot, which is completely devoid of both logic and drama.

When Dobbs finds out what happened he dutifully steps aside, but we’ve all learned our lesson: Opposing gay marriage is silly, corporations are bad and neither Republicans nor Democrats are progressive enough.

At least since “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), pop culture has kept alive the idea of the political neophyte equipped only with integrity and old-fashioned common sense who makes us all realize that lobbyists, money and politics shouldn’t mix.

All three branches of government have bought into part of that by enacting the blatantly unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign finance rules.

But no one wants to admit the effect innumerable pages of federal taxes and regulations have on the political process. As long the government uses those powers to try to micromanage the economic decisions of 300 million Americans instead of merely raising revenue needed to run the government, there will be thousands of lobbyists trying to save or make money for their clients at the expense of everyone else.

A drastically flattened federal tax system is the most obvious thing I can think of that might allow some of that K Street office space to be used for some productive purpose.

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.