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Myth Boxes
Campaigns, Elections, and Political Scum
Few movies treat political campaigns gently. Most films that have political themes focus on the corruption in politics and the unscrupulous, degenerate means by which one gets into public office—the campaign process. No film better depicts that theme than The Candidate, the 1972 classic starring Robert Redford. In one of his earliest film roles, Redford plays the part of Bill McKay, a lawyer who heads a California legal aid office that provides services to the poor. When McKay is enticed to run for political office, he is spurned and rejected by his colleagues as having sold out to a corrupt system. As one worker puts it, "Politics is bullshit." After all, remarks a political activist, "Politicians don't talk, they make sounds."
This cynical view of politics and the corrupt campaign process permeates the film. In reality, many campaigns do involve the unpleasant and, some would argue, corrupt task of raising funds for the campaign. In turn, particularly with high-visibility offices, candidates and members of the electorate often feel controlled and manipulated. Furthermore, they find the orchestrated quality of the campaign process lacking in substance and loaded with glitz, glamour, and distortion. As one newsreporter in the film states, these candidates are "selling themselves like an underarm deodorant." Such was the image in The Candidate.
While reality suggests that such campaigns do take place, mythmaking also argues that the movie, as a form of popular culture, can and does misrepresent the campaign process. During the four years between presidential elections, more than 500,000 elections take place in the United States, and they are preceded by much more than a million political campaigns. Most campaigns are run by candidates and small staffs who work hard to establish policy positions despite relatively little money. The Candidate magnifies and distorts the problems of the campaign process. It also becomes a means of generating myths about the nature of many campaigns in the United States.
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