Mr. Smith's Radical Truth

Why a Hollywood Classic Holds the Secret to Political Success

By David Talbot, Columnist, The Kennedy Beacon

The path to the White House can be found in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Really.

Sure, the 1939 movie classic by director Frank Capra is sentimental. (They didn’t call him “Capracorn” for nothing.) The feature starring the wonderful Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur is filled with “hooey” (to use its slang) about Washington monuments and American democracy. But in its corny way, Mr. Smith is still surprisingly radical and relevant.

It also teaches lessons about how insurgent candidates can defy powerful political machines.

Capra himself was a conservative flag-waver, but he often worked with left-wing screenwriters. Sidney Buchman – the movie-star handsome, Hollywood golden boy who co-wrote Mr. Smith – was a member of the Communist Party during the 1930s. (Buchman would later be blacklisted by the movie industry, after he testified about his own political beliefs before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, but refused to give the names of others to congressional investigators.)

“Intellectually (Capra) was a very simplistic man,” Buchman later recalled about their strange collaboration on the film. “His view of life came down to that of a fairy tale: at the end the good people had to be rewarded and the evil ones punished…. I really believe that he never knew what Mr. Smith actually was saying.”

During one of their heated discussions, Capra demanded to know whether Buchman was a communist. 

“Are you a fascist?” Buchman shot back. “And we left it at that,” said the screenwriter.

There’s a brazenly populist message to Mr. Smith. Washington, the movie says, is controlled by corporate barons like smug kingmaker Jim Taylor (played by Edward Arnold, the villain in many Capra vehicles) and their political puppets, like the smooth Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains). The nation’s capital might dazzle tourists (and, until his education, the sublimely naive Mr. Smith) with its lit-up Capitol dome, Lincoln monument and democratic pomp. But it’s actually a cesspool, filled with lies, cynicism, corruption and greed.

If there’s one line that defines Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it’s this: “The only causes worth fighting for are lost causes.” It’s a surprisingly dark sentiment. But this fatalism guided Jefferson Smith’s father, according to his idealistic son. And it cost the crusading newspaper publisher his life. The journalist was shot in the back by a member of the political machine, Smith recalls, as he and his mentor, Senator Paine, hurtle in a train toward Washington.

Like Smith’s father, Paine was also a crusader in his youth. But he has since sold out, becoming a well-compensated chess piece on Taylor’s board. Paine has an eloquent way of advocating compromise with the dark side: “That’s how states and empires have been built since time began,” he tells the young Smith. And that’s how politicians convince themselves they’re sometimes serving their constituents.

Paine’s guilty conscience finally gets the better of him. In a histrionic concluding scene, skillfully played by Rains, the corrupted “Silver Knight” of the Senate melts down and confesses his guilt before the entire chamber. It’s a concession to Capracorn, and it only gives us a temporary emotional high.  

Will good finally triumph in the Washington swamp? That dark question certainly hung over the country then – and still does today.

Despite our deep pessimism about the country’s future, we still want a Jimmy Stewart (who can show so much feeling – and conviction – with his facial expressions) to save us. A political leader who inspires the best in us. America wants to be great again, because we all feel we’ve fallen so far. That greatness we yearn for is more inclusive than Trump’s America, more Camelot for many of us. But I understand its mythical power. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington caught it, the sense of loss, the wish to be as lofty as our ideals. Winning candidates get it, too.

On the verge of physical collapse after his long, grueling filibuster, an exhausted and raspy-voiced Mr. Smith realizes he’s been outmaneuvered by Taylor, who controls every major media outlet in their state. Every big newspaper and radio network is blaring lies and smears about Smith. (Sound familiar?)

“Somebody will listen to me,” croaks Smith in the Senate well before crumpling to the floor.

And they were, it turns out. The adolescent army that Smith has mobilized with his energetic idealism and courage publishes the truth about the senator in its  alternative newspaper, Boys’ Stuff. And even though they are run off the road and beaten by Taylor’s thugs when they distribute the newspaper, their valor – and Smith’s – finally overwhelms Paine. The truth triumphs!

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” as Hemingway writes at the end of The Sun Also Rises.

The truth seems like a lost cause today. Big media is owned by wealthy power brokers like Jim Taylor. Once independent and outspoken publications are snapped up by investors with shady national security connections. As Jean Arthur, who plays Mr. Smith’s savvy secretary, Clarissa Saunders, harrumphs disgustedly about the media blackout: “The freedom of the press!”

But the truth is out there. You might have to hunt for podcasts and blogs and social media pages, but it can be found.

Somebody is listening.