WASHINGTON — When Senate Republicans moved ahead with their
plans to change the filibuster rule, liberals and other critics
turned to an old sentimental favorite to bolster their case: Frank
Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
People For the American Way launched a $5 million ad campaign
using images from the film. The New York Times evoked it
in pro-filibuster editorials as did liberal columnists like Bill
Press.
The award for cheapest use of it, though, goes to Sen. Frank
Lautenberg (D-N.J). On the Senate floor Thursday he lectured in
front of a huge picture of the film’s star Jimmy Stewart, who uses
the filibuster to thwart the forces of evil.
The movie, he said, “is a celebration of this Senate, the
world’s greatest deliberative body. But if the majority leader is
successful in ending the filibuster … we will move from the
world’s greatest deliberative body to a rubber-stamp factory.”
If that happens, he warned, the U.S. Senate would become like the
Senate in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. The Dark
Side of the Force, apparently, would take over.
These comments, and many other similar ones by the
pro-filibuster crowd, raise a simple question: Have any of these
folks actually watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
recently?
Because if they had, they’d know that it doesn’t actually live
up to its reputation as a quaint, sentimental “celebration of the
Senate.” It’s actually a pretty dark, cynical film about U.S.
Democracy in 1930s. The movie’s underlying theme is how Roosevelt’s
New Deal corrupted Congress.
More to the point, Smith’s climatic filibuster bears no
resemblance to the Democrats’ filibusters of Bush’s judicial
nominees.
LET’S RECAP THE FILM for those who have not seen it or who may have
forgotten.
Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, leader of a Boy Scouts-type
organization who is plucked from obscurity to fill out the term of
the state’s just-deceased U.S. senator.
He’s picked because he’s thought to be too naive to do anything
other than go along with the state’s other senator, Joseph Paine,
the silver-haired picture of noblesse oblige (Claude Raines, in
another great performance as a suave, morally compromised man).
It quickly becomes apparent that Smith is different from the
other senators: he doesn’t want to spend taxpayer dollars.
His first bill is to create a boys’ camp in his home state. He
only wants a loan from the government, not a grant, and intends to
pay it back through private fund-raising. The government, he says,
has enough to do without paying for his boys’ camp.
Trouble begins for Smith when he learns that the land he wants
to put the camp on has already been set aside for major dam project
Paine is sponsoring. The deal is pure pork-barrel politics and
important to media baron Jim Taylor, who stands to make a fortune
from it.
Smith decides he cannot support it. It’s graft and a waste of
money besides, he says.
“There are a hundred other places in the state that really need
the water,” he says. He is aghast that Paine, whom he idolizes,
would support it.
Paine tries to “talk sense” into Smith, delivering a soliloquy
about the virtue of spending taxpayer money:
“Thirty years ago I had your ideals. I was you. I had to make
the same decision you were asked to make today. And I made it. I
compromised — yes! So that all those years, I could sit in that
Senate and serve the people in a thousand honest ways. You’ve got
to face facts, Jeff. I’ve served our state well, haven’t I?
We have the lowest unemployment and the highest federal
grants. But, well, I’ve had to compromise. I’ve had to
play ball,” he tells Smith. (Emphasis added.)
There in a nutshell is the corruption that Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington is focused on: the belief that there is something
good, even noble, about robbing Peter (i.e. the taxpayer) to pay
Paul.
BEAR IN MIND, THE film came out in 1939 when FDR’s New Deal was
still in full swing. The movie argues that the deal’s public
spending projects corrupted lawmakers by giving them millions to
dole out. Inevitably, favoritism, back-scratching and worse set in
and once-noble legislators like Paine are corrupted.
Worse yet, everybody in the film except Smith accepts this as
normal. No wonder D.C. lawmakers denounced the film when it first
came out.
Paine warns Smith not to oppose the dam project, telling him
that “powerful forces” (i.e. Taylor and his newspapers) want it.
“They’ll destroy you” if he stands in their way, Paine says.
Smith is unmoved and makes clear that he’ll challenge it on the
Senate floor and expose how it will benefit Taylor.
Paine responds by coldly betraying Smith, framing him for an
ethics violation and trying to get him ejected from the Senate. In
the film’s climax, Smith refuses to relinquish the Senate floor,
preventing the other Senators from voting to oust him.
This is the film’s famous filibuster and it has nothing to do
with keeping a judicial nominee off the bench. It is all about
Smith fighting for his own survival against the entrenched
interests in Washington.
It’s also worth noting that this is the old-fashioned kind of
filibuster, where Smith must speak constantly or yield the floor.
The rule has been changed since then. These days Democrats merely
need to say they’re filibustering a judge and they can still be
home for dinner.
In the end, Smith’s filibuster itself doesn’t really do anything
anyway. He collapses after speaking for nearly a full day and
Paine, guilt-ridden, confesses to having helped frame Smith.
Smith’s marathon speech could just as easily have been set in front
of the Capitol Building. Plotwise, it would have made no
difference.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a terrific and very
entertaining film. It’s something everybody should see and pay
close attention to, especially some members of Congress and the
media.
