BEFORE: It's Election Day here in NYC, perhaps where you are as well. See? I told you there was a plan. So I'm going to watch this film, and then talk about politics for a while. That's pretty much it, but I can't help having this nagging feeling there was something else I was supposed to do. Let's see, watch film, go to bed, oversleep, rush to work, type up blog. Don't worry, it'll come to me.
Linking from "Welcome to Mooseport", Gene Hackman was also in the great "Young Frankenstein" with Peter Boyle (last seen in "Red Heat").
THE PLOT: Bill McKay is a candidate for the U.S. Senate from California. He has no hope of winning, so he is willing to tweak the establishment.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Ides of March" (Movie #1,366)
AFTER: Your opinion of the central character here may largely depend on how you feel about elected officials, or politics in general. McKay is an ambitious young community activist, given the opportunity to run a probably-losing campaign against a well-liked, experienced incumbent. But, I guess each party still has to find someone to run against every candidate, so this sort of thing probably happens more often than you might think.
So this becomes a look at not just the man but also the machine, the advisers and the publicists and the political commercial directors who all take a hand in shaping the platform of a man to get him elected, and then have no hand in how he actually votes to represent his constituents. It's a strange quirk of the political process that we elect leaders based on promises, and then for 4 or 6 years, we have almost no way to insure that they follow-through, except possibly the impeachment process. There was a politician recently who declared that he would vote however the people he represents wanted, even if they want him to vote to reinstitute slavery. This was shocking for two reasons, first that a politician would feel so strongly about people's opinions (because how could they possibly agree about all the issues), and second that there's a politician one step away from voting for slaves.
It's much more common that politicians find a way to justify voting the way that they want, based on their personal beliefs or opinions at any given time. Agreed, voting in the best interests of your consituents may not always be the same as voting the way your constituents want you to. McKay's got a lot of ideas about how "we can use THIS money to clean up THIS river" and "we can pay for more education without raising taxes" - and that leads me back to "big government" and Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg, aka "Il Duce", exemplifies the fact that power corrupts, or at least power makes people believe that they're smarter than everyone else. Here's a guy who looked around NYC and saw a bunch of problems - not everyone's in the best physical shape, there are too many cars and not enough trees, and people (probably himself) can't enjoy a nice meal without smelling a cigarette. So began the mandate. No smoking in restaurants (OK, I'll give him that one, I rather enjoy the benefits of that.). Then, no smoking in bars. No smoking outside bars, or inside taxicabs, or inside private homes if people have young kids. (Seriously?)
No giant sodas. No trans-fats. No extra salt in restaurant food. No salt shakers on the tables. Get the picture? Where is the damn cut-off? No cars entering Manhattan with fewer than three passengers. Pretty soon that will be no cars, period - here, everyone, have a low-gear bicycle. You could probably use more exercise anyway, fatty. There are no parking spaces, anyway, because we used that space for bike lanes, bike storage racks, pedestrian areas and more traffic islands with trees.
Why don't you worry about taxes, crime and terrorism and let me worry about how much salt is in my food?
(I'm fairly sure that the Declaration of Independence says I can eat whatever I want. Yep, it's implied by "pursuit of happiness", even if that pursuit includes overstuffed deli sandwiches. Hey, you pursue happy your way, and let me pursue it mine.)
I'll admit that crime statistics are down, but I also allow for the fact that someone may be fudging the numbers. It's also possible that's because he drove criminals out of town with all this nanny-state B.S. as they grew tired of it. Worst of all, he instituted term limits for ALL politicians (including himself) then decided a couple years later that no one else could help NYC out of its economic downturn and therefore, the new rule didn't apply to him. Convenient. Do the crime stats include the theft of the mayoral office for a third term?
Anyway, back to the film. McKay slowly learns the ways to interact with the public, shaking hands and giving stump speeches. Learning how to give a soundbite, how to rile up the other candidate during a debate, even how to make peace with his own father (an ex-politician himself) in order to gain his endorsement. It's debatable whether he's bettering himself, or just figuring out the system. An on-screen political pundit gives us the breakdown - in order to gain points in the race, he broadens his message, but in doing so becomes as generic as a laundry detergent.
You sort of have to take the year it was released, 1972, into consideration - topics in the debate include busing, civil rights, and whether abortion should be legal. 40 years later, and people are still fighting on that last one. This was also a time when news organizations rushed to give election results, unaware that announcing any results before the polls closed could have an impact on the results, causing a last-minute flood of votes for the candidate in second-place. Yes, it took DECADES for the news channels to implement the policy of waiting for the polls to close, which is a real head-scratcher for me. It seems so obvious in retrospect, kind of like how the can opener wasn't invented until about 30 years after the tin can.
Did McKay have an affair? The general opinion seems to be "Yes", based on a scene where he's late for a meeting, and a woman is seen leaving his hotel room, shortly before he does. However, I'd allow for some ambiguity here, because it's possible that she was a reporter, and he was merely straightening his clothes after getting up from a seated interview. But assuming that he did cheat on his wife, are we meant to take this as a condemnation of the man, or the system? What, if anything, about the electoral process changed him into the type of man who would cheat - or was he always this way, but never afforded the opportunity? I'll have more on this topic tomorrow, I think.
The film ends with a question mark, after the election - what next? It sort of cries out for a sequel.
Also starring Robert Redford (last seen in "The Clearing"), Melvyn Douglas (last seen in "Being There"), Don Porter, Allen Garfield (last seen in "The Front Page"), Karen Carlson, Michael Lerner, with cameos from Natalie Wood (last seen in "Sex and the Single Girl"), Pat Harrington Jr. and the voice of Broderick Crawford (last seen in "All the King's Men").
RATING: 5 out of 10 campaign stops
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