SPOILER ALERT!
It will never be the same.
I’m thinking about some of the political movies that I enjoyed watching once, back when I was living in a fool’s paradise.
In All the President’s Men (1976), two reporters for the Washington Post uncover evidence that eventually leads to the resignation of Richard Nixon. Nothing like that will ever happen again, now that the Supreme Court has given the president immunity for such things as using the Department of Justice to obstruct justice. Today, the president that was once and will be again would probably order the FBI to bring charges against such treasonous reporters, assuming that the owner of the newspaper didn’t fire them first.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was one of my favorites. But now, instead of an elaborate plot involving brainwashing and assassination in order to put a Soviet agent in the White House, Russia was able to get its candidate elected president by ordinary, democratic means.
In Advise & Consent (1962), we see the Senate struggle to confirm the president’s nominee for secretary of state, one Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda). Information has come to light that the nominee was once a member of a “communist cell,” where he supposedly said that communism would come to the United States gradually. From some of the nominee’s speeches, it is feared that he will be all too willing to yield to the demands of the Soviet Union. But with a name like Leffingwell, what would you expect?
In a few months, we can expect a different kind of struggle within the Senate. Since the president-elect himself can be counted on to cozy up to the Russians, there is not much point in worrying about his nominees in this regard. The Republicans need only ask themselves whether they should confirm those nominees in the usual way, thereby displaying their fealty, or simply allow for recess appointments, dodging the matter altogether.
One of the senators in that movie commits suicide when his past catches up with him, in particular, his homosexual relationship with another soldier when he was stationed in Hawaii. At first, I thought this was one more feature of the movie that was outdated. But then it occurred to me that the Supreme Court may not only invalidate same-sex marriage but even recriminalize sodomy as well. So, perhaps this plot point will live to see another day.
Seven Days in May (1964) was thrilling, watching generals plot a military coup, in which President Lyman (Frederic March) would be removed from office and replaced by General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster). There were several indications that these senior military officers were basically fascists, while the president and his allies believed in the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy.
General Scott and other senior men in the military were worried about the fact that President Lyman was too trusting of the Russians, and that action had to be taken immediately before he allowed the Soviet Union to gain a military advantage over the United States. This concern on the part of the generals in the movie is similar to that which exists between actual generals of today and our once and future president. As in the movie, these actual generals are concerned that the re-elected president will play into the hands of the Russians.
Unlike the movie, however, it is a fascist president that that attempted a coup, not the generals, who are the ones that believe in the Constitution. As a result, they may be subjected to courts-martial for being disloyal.
As with Advise & Consent, there is a sexual component in this movie as well. General Scott wrote some love letters to a woman with whom he was having an affair, and this evidence of adultery is considered as a way of thwarting the coup, forcing Scott to resign under threat of scandal. However, President Lyman decides to eschew such scurrilous methods. Unlike the threat of a homosexual scandal in Advise & Consent, the possibility of a heterosexual scandal of the kind found in Seven Days in May now seems quaint. In a world where a politician can be found liable for sexual abuse and then go on to be elected president, love letters revealing an adulterous affair in the past aren’t worth the price of the postage stamps by which they were mailed.
And so it is that these movies must now be viewed as artifacts of twentieth-century America, revealing a time when people believed in the strength and integrity of their constitutional republic.
I suppose if we want to see a political movie that still has relevance, there’s always Triumph of the Will (1935).
