A phase in the crowd

I have no idea who will win the presidential election when all the votes are counted some time after November 5 and the new Congress tabulates the results in the Electoral College on January 6. To avoid disappointment, I hope for the best and expect the worst. I can only say that if my hope of a Trump victory is vindicated, I hope no one shows Kamala Harris the Eastman memos. Again, I hope for the best and expect the worst. Anticipating what we used quaintly to call election day, I recommend two movies about politics that are playing on TCM tonight and tomorrow night.

Tonight TCM plays The Candidate (1972), starring Robert Redford. Everything clicks in this film, as it does in the uphill Senate campaign of Redford’s character, but much of the film’s excellence derives from the screenplay by Jeremy Larner.

Larner was a writer with one highly regarded novel to his credit at the time he went to work as a speechwriter for the 1968 presidential campaign of Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. He followed up that experience with a week-long stint as the guest of the successful 1970 California Senate campaign of John Tunney.

Larner put his literary skill and inside political experience to use in writing the screenplay. Although it specifically explores the film, the 2016 Brooklyn Magazine interview with Larner is worth reading on its own terms.

Tomorrow night TCM plays A Face In the Crowd (1957), starring Andy Griffith. The death of Andy Griffith in 2012 prompted Richard Corliss to revisit the film. That’s what I want to do here.

Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay based on his story “Your Arkansas Traveler.” According to Richard Schickel’s biography of Kazan, Schulberg’s story was inspired by Will Rogers. It featured Lonesome Rhodes, “a good-natured hillbilly with the common touch, who, like Rogers, starts working sly political commentary into his cornpone monologues, and when his wealth and influence grows, becomes a menace to liberal-minded society.”

Starting with a Rogers-like character, Schulberg contemplated “the then hot career of Arthur Godfrey, a ukelele-strumming hick with a popular music and talk radio show in Washington who had come to a larger public’s attention with his tearful coverage of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral on CBS.” Godfrey became the host of a popular national radio show. When he moved to television variety programs, Godfrey grew “increasingly tyrannical with his supporting cast” and “increasingly forward with his political opinions.” His career flamed out a few years after the release of A Face in the Crowd.

Elia Kazan directed the film. Playing Lonesome Rhodes, Andy Griffith turned in a performance of astonishing ferocity. The film reflects the concerns of Schulberg and Kazan over the uses to which television might be put by a glib demagogue. When his show takes off, Rhodes gives the dauntingly square Senator Worthington Fuller a lesson in how to transform himself into a presidential candidate through the medium of television.

Rhodes is introduced to Fuller by his sponsor General Haynesworth, manufacturer of the worthless Vitajex pick-me-up tablets. General Haynesworth advises Fuller that he needs a slogan like “Time for a change,” “The mess in Washington” or “More bang for a buck.” Rhodes takes it from there. It’s a scene that has proved uncannily relevant over the years. Think of the 2008 Obama campaign with “Hope and change” and “Change we can believe in” or the 2024 Harris campaign with “A new way forward.”

Griffith himself turned up in the 2010 mid-term elections in connection with the debate over Obamacare. Griffith appeared in three advertisements, one of which is captured in the video below. He was playing “Andy Griffith,” but he was a figure who bore a passing resemblance to Lonesome Rhodes. This time around old Andy was spouting cornpone baloney in the service of the president’s project of nationalizing health care. The ads in essence put Lonesome Rhodes to work for a substantially higher authority. He wasn’t some lone operator who could be tripped up by an open mic, as Rhodes was.

Tom Fitton reported in the Washington Examiner that the Obama administration spent $3,184,000 in taxpayer funds to produce and air the Griffith advertisements in the run-up to election day that fall, all with the purpose of “educating” Medicare beneficiaries, caregivers, and family members about forthcoming changes to Medicare as a result of Obamacare.

Fitton also related the findings of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The advertisements were little more than glorified propaganda. Griffith’s assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, “the truth is that the new [Obamacare] law is guaranteed to result in benefit cuts for one class of Medicare beneficiaries — those in private Medicare Advantage plans.”

Obama delivered an innovation slightly beyond the heated imagination of Budd Schulberg. Obama brought us the cornpone television demagogy of Lonesome Rhodes yoked to the power of the executive branch of the United States government.

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