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Another Perspective
Alien Voices
A very useful viewing of Advise and Consent.
Having spent the prior two weeks soaking up the sun and scenery of sumptuous Italy, I returned to these shores on Friday to good news: Mitt Romney had retained and even built on the momentum generated from his decisive victory in the first presidential debate. Through the miracles of modern technology and my sister’s Slingbox, we were able to watch the second and third debates, happily acknowledging that Romney had managed to do himself no harm in the run up to the last few days before November 6.
So, after unpacking and checking out the latest polls, I decided I needed a shot of American TV. I eagerly gathered up my trusty remote and fired up TCM, where they were featuring a night of political films, featuring All the President’s Men and Seven Days in May, but beginning with one of my favorites, Advise and Consent. Although I have never read it, the movie is based on a book by conservative author Alan Drury and reflects his years as a U.S. Senate reporter for UPI; giving us the lowdown on the confirmation process of a fictional Secretary of State nominee.
Interestingly, both TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and his guest, Wolf Blitzer opined that the movie illustrates the contrast between the genteel relationships of senators of different parties in the 1960s and the supposedly toxic nature of those relationships today. Maybe this is the way liberals see it, but ask nearly any conservative what they think about Senate collegiality and they will no doubt recall with a shudder two words: power sharing.
Reading most modern reviews of the movie, one might never guess that it derives its plot from an anti-communist novel, but such are the ways of liberals. Indeed, maverick director Otto Preminger seems to have chosen to emphasize the more lurid aspects of the plot — primarily the attempt to blackmail one of the primary characters because of a wartime homosexual experience — while giving short shrift to the actual objections to the nominee: that he lied about past Communist associations and favors dialogue with, rather than confrontation of, the Russians.
The characterizations in the film are fine, with Henry Fonda predictably playing Robert Leffingwell, the perjury-prone yet noble nominee — “It’s a Washington kind of lie,” he tells his son on one occasion — whose Communist past is pooh poohed as a youthful indiscretion. Of particular interest is the character of Senator Fred Van Ackerman, a smarmy little demagogue and the movie’s clear heavy, who will stop at nothing to push his left-wing peace agenda. This is surprising, not because it is not entirely in character with the way radical liberals do business, but because it’s shocking to see it depicted as such in a Hollywood movie.
But it is the inestimable Charles Laughton, in his last and maybe best role, who steals the show. Playing Senator Seabrook Cooley, an irascible yet lovable Dixiecrat, the movie’s best lines are put on his most capable lips, as multi-syllabic imprecations wash over his numerous enemies. And his ripest target is Leffingwell, who makes this chilling statement: “We must not bind ourselves to outworn principles of the past when we find those principles standing in the way of affirmative action for peace.”
This prompts Cooley’s retort, which is eerily topical, especially considering the current occupant of the Oval Office: “Is our storehouse of gray power so impoverished for this office which could effect the destiny of our nation and the world? He will pursue a policy of appeasement. He will weaken the moral fiber of our great nation. He will bring destruction to our traditions.”
The movie concludes with somewhat of a surprise ending, and one that I will not reveal here; go out and rent the movie to see for yourself. But I leave you with Seeb Cooley’s final statement on Leffingwell; one that continues to resonate today and may very well presage next week’s election results:
His voice is not the voice I want to hear speak for America. It is to me an alien voice. Perhaps it’s the new voice of my country. These old ears aren’t tuned to these new sounds; I don’t know. I don’t understand much of what Mr. Leffingwell says. I don’t understand how principles of dignity can become outworn. Or how this nation can be represented without pride. I don’t understand these things.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Lisa Fabrizio
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http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/01/alien-voices
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spike59| 11.1.12 @ 6:29AM
PRICELESS, Lisa!!!!!!
drudge ette obama| 11.1.12 @ 7:58AM
Thanks for reminding us that we aren't reinventing the wheel and that many before us have struggled with the same challenges.
SUBVET| 11.1.12 @ 12:57PM
Lisa.............missed your wisdom welcome back.
Pecos Pete| 11.1.12 @ 9:01AM
Lisa: Well done! Good timing for your commentary and disappointing that those who need to read and understand will never have the opportunity.
gene| 11.1.12 @ 9:08AM
It was not until the advent of VCR's and now DVD's that I could confirm what I saw as a child wathcing this movie in the 60's. Actor Edward Andrews is playing a Senator and making a speech. Walter Pigeon interrupts with a question trying to trap him into a "time limit" on speaking. Edward Andrews does not fall for it and continues to speak. However as he is adjusting his glasses and rubbing his nose, he gives Walter Pigeon's character the middle finger. Very subtle and very quick, but it is there. Before you could stop and look at a frame with VCR's, people would tell me that it never happened. Just my imagination. No one would have that in a film from the early 60's. Not my imagination and yes, in "Advise and Consent", one U.S. Senator gives the finger (In a light hearted joking kind of way) to another U.S. Senator.
gene| 11.1.12 @ 9:11AM
And I have never heard anyone mention it on the Intro's on TCM or AMC or anywhere else. I have never heard anyone refer to it.
Al Adab| 11.1.12 @ 6:15PM
In other trivia, the former Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst played "The Senator" the old guy with the voice, in this movie. Ashurst, a Democrat, was responsible in great part, for stopping FDRs court packing plan. That should stand to his everlasting credit.
Stormy| 11.1.12 @ 11:31AM
I also watched the movie recently, and my question is what does affirmative action for peace mean? In any event, we all know how well affirmative action has worked out for us with out current president.
Vance P. Frickey| 11.25.12 @ 5:04AM
"Affirmative action for peace" means carriers going to sea built for 90 aircraft carrying only 60, with their ability to project power reduced accordingly; it means a Strategic Command reduced to 851 nuclear delivery systems when Russia has not only a nuclear arsenal roughly equal to ours but an ongoing offensive biological weapons development program potentially maintaining several tons of weaponized biowarfare agents and a new generation of nerve agents (the Novichok gases) an order of magnitude more toxic than our most toxic nerve agent, VX - and while China has an estimated 3,000 nuclear-armed missiles in tunnels throughout their mainland.
"Affirmative action for peace" as it has been practiced by the United States has meant signing disarmament treaties that we know only we and our allies will abide by, and which will leave us at a massive disadvantage in the event of an actual world war. We won't be able to punish the violator of a strategic arms limitation treaty, so they make no sense at all in the practical sense.
ejp| 11.1.12 @ 6:20PM
Lisa, I suggest you pick up the original novel as well as its five sequels. They are much more conservative in tone, and you will be amazed to discover that a very minor character in the movie, Senator Orrin Knox (Edward Andrews) is in fact one of the principal figures not just in the original novel but in time emerges as the underlying moral conscience of the entire series.
Al Adab| 11.1.12 @ 7:15PM
In one of the several sequals Drury wrote he names a newsman Frankly Unctious. Hmmm.
Vance P. Frickey| 11.25.12 @ 5:09AM
No one ever accused Allen Drury of subtlety. The scary thing, however, is how reality has managed to out-Drury Drury. His liberal reporters have been out-slimed by Dan Rather; his worst liberal politicians are almost virtuous placed beside Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. I grew up reading Drury and finding him shrill and his plots overblown, but in the second term of Barack Obama nothing in Drury's novels seems implausible.
jclittlep| 11.3.12 @ 6:07AM
The book (and the 5 sequels) were much more about the debate over the USSR and Communism than the movie. Preminger had such good box office out of "Anatomy of a Murder" with Jimmy Stewart, which was semi-smutty for 1959, so he went for the smut again. The sequence where Don Murray went to New York to find his former lover was made from whole cloth - not a hint of it was in the book.
Another thing you'll find in the book is lots of strident, liberal, peacenik characters. Sound familiar? One in particular, who set the whole blackmail subplot in motion, was a Supreme Court justice who likes to meddle in politics.
The books are really great.
Drew Byrne| 11.5.12 @ 5:03AM
What is often possible is occcasionally impossible; and, similarly, often vice versa occasionally.
Vance P. Frickey| 11.25.12 @ 4:41AM
Sadly, Allen Drury's plots are closer to real life than ever. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson and Barney Frank could have been lifted verbatim out of a Drury novel.
Lord Chesterfield described them best:
"Others go more modestly and more slyly still (as they think) to work; but, in my mind, still more ridiculously. They confess themselves (not without some degree of shame and confusion) into all the Cardinal Virtues; by first degrading them into weaknesses, and then owning their misfortune, in being made up of those weaknesses. They cannot see people suffer, without sympathising with, and endeavouring to help them. They cannot see people want, without relieving them, though, truly, their own circumstances cannot very well afford it. They cannot help speaking truth, though they know all the imprudence of it. In short, they know that, with all these weaknesses, they are not fit to live in the world, much less to thrive in it. But they are now too old to change, and must rub on as well as they can. This sounds too ridiculous and outré, almost, for the stage; and yet, take my word for it, you will frequently meet with it, upon the common stage of the world. And here I will observe, by the bye, that you will often meet with characters in nature, so extravagant, that a discreet poet would not venture to set them upon the stage in their true and high colouring."