There are many disconcerting moments in the new Keanu Reeves sci-fi action thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still; in fact, the film is almost entirely composed of such moments. But its most discomfiting aspect is the fact that the US government is represented by a badass secretary of defence, played by Kathy Bates, who does not believe in making nice with the incoming aliens, but rather kicking their little green butts. Very clearly, Bates's character is influenced by Hillary Clinton's tough act - the act she displayed in her notorious 3am Phonecall TV campaign and the interview in which she made a point of declaring that if the Iranians launched a nuclear attack on Israel, a Hillary-led government "would obliterate them".

Kathy Bates's character in the film was conceived at a time when it was pretty likely Hillary would win the Democratic nomination, and therefore very possibly the presidency, but the fact that the president is not shown in the movie - he is spoken to on the phone, but his voice is not heard - itself acknowledges the possibility that Barack Obama would win. Because Hollywood has always been very reluctant to imagine an African-American in the White House. As Mark Ravenhill notes in a recent column, the black presidents in the movies are either in sci-fi or comedy, such as Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact or Chris Rock in Head of State, which suggests the idea is only appropriate for something far-fetched or absurd. (On TV, however, Dennis Haysbert was a dignified African-American president in 24.)

The Hillary-a-like defence secretary in The Day the Earth Stood Still is a queasy throwback to the 90s, when we saw loads of Bill Clinton facsimiles on the big screen: attractive-ish, middle-aged white commanders-in-chief who were very much in the Bill mould, and flatteringly cast in romantic action-hero roles. There was Michael Douglas in The American President, Harrison Ford in Air Force One, Bill Pullman in Independence Day, John Travolta in Primary Colors and Jeff Bridges in The Contender. There was no Dubya figure that I can recall in the noughties, though there was of course a real, and rather underpowered Dubya in Oliver Stone's respectful film of the same name.

So will there be a surge of Obamas in the cinema? Maybe. But I suspect that there are plenty of people in Hollywood who will think that whatever's happened in the real world, in commercial and entertainment terms, a black president is still too "urban" an idea. (Notoriously, the relative commercial failure of HBO's magnificent TV show The Wire is attributed to its predominantly African-American cast - despite the endorsement of Barack Obama, who gave a newspaper interview saying that it was the best show on American television.)

I think there will be a new indirectness, even coyness, and the "president" will, just as in The Day the Earth Stood Still, be imagined offscreen but with an onscreen representative, a representative more amenable to conventional Hollywood drama, and this representative will be a Hillary-a-like. It will be this subordinate Hillary-a-like who will stride into top-level meetings with the military top brass, and who will be ushered into sleek black limos, surrounded by security guards in black suits. It will be the Hillary-a-like who will tell her colleagues and us, the audience, what the president is thinking. She will be a government figure whose existence is an acknowledgment of the progressive times: a tough, capable, hawkish woman with a tender, even vulnerable side. We have already had one of these, in fact, in the form of Meryl Streep's dragon-lady CIA leader in the war-on-terror drama Rendition.

Barack Obama might have won in Washington, but I have a sinking feeling Hillary is going to win big in Hollywood ...