By chance, I was watching a movie while playing solitaire on my computer. My excuse is that it was a rainy, dull day and the afternoon lineup on MSNBC was far less interesting than TCM (when last I checked in our nation was going to hell in a handbasket and Rachel was sent back in to chronicle the journey.) The film was the 1972 political dramedy starring Robert Redford, The Candidate, loosely based on the campaign of John Tunney who served in Congress as a Representative (1965-1973) and then as Senator (1971-1976).
If MSNBC had been around back then, Tunney (and by proxy, Redford’s Bill McKay) would have been darlings of the network's stable of hosts and commentators. Morning Joe regular, Mike Barnicle appears in a cameo appearance as “Wilson.” Barnicle at the time was a speechwriter for various candidates including Tunney. The film is a comical-cynical look at American campaigns as Redford’s McKay is talked into running against an older incumbent. The matchup is young and naive liberal environmentalist versus the experienced and condescending business-oriented conservative— David and Goliath without the slingshot.
The plot felt familiar as I watched the unfolding campaign in a movie that was rushed into production to open just before the Nixon-McGovern election that fall. That campaign served as the death knell for the liberal agenda of the previous decade. After the deaths of the liberal icons starting with JFK and ending with the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, George McGovern represented the last gasp for liberal causes. His was the little liberal campaign engine that unfortunately couldn’t defeat the Nixon landslide.
CUTE
McKay’s social welfare speech near the film's end encapsulated the cause and sounds faintly familiar to what was lost in the past election. Redford delivered what has essentially been the core Democratic Party message from FDR to the present:
I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Seriously, it's nice to talk to an audience of working people because I can congratulate you on having jobs. You do have jobs, don't you? How many are out of work? The unemployment figure for this state is 8%. Think of it! The biggest, the richest, the most powerful country cannot keep its full job force working. It cannot tend all its sick people. It cannot feed all its hungry people or decently house its poor people. It cannot educate everyone who needs an education. I say there has got to be a better way! That's what this election is about. Because the time has passed when you can turn your back on the fundamental needs of the people... — The Candidate
Just before he wins the election in an upset, McKay’s father delivers a devastating line to a doubter who suggests his son will lose. The reason he will win, says the dad played by Melvyn Douglas, is “He’s cute!” If only McGovern had been a tad cuter!
Democrats are locked in a political climate that is in disarray. We have lost both houses of Congress and are seriously in jeopardy in the courts. We are looking for answers that seem so hard to come by at the moment, but “fair” and “just” may well have to settle for “cute.” We need a leader within the party who delivers our agenda and not merely our outrage. So far Chuck Schumer and the other Democratic leaders who echo his anger and frustration do little to inspire us that they have a plan. We share their frustration but look to them for answers. The plan begins with a new voice-- one that has not been rendered powerless and, frankly, ineffective. We needn’t blame anyone, simply recognize that the situation demands a different tack. Perhaps, like in the movie, something as simple and incoherent as what Bill McKay had to offer will work. Somewhere within the party, a new leader needs to step forward with different skills— a different look, a new plan of attack.
IT’S TIME
The new leader candidates may not be apparent at the moment. They may even be unaware of their calling and hesitant about their potential. But they are there and current leadership must make room for them to rise up and take hold of the party’s message. The message really hasn’t changed much since Bill McKay delivered it in a film-- until he delivered it with a new passion and a newer voice. Maybe the difference was McKay clearly believed it. He meant it, “Because the time has passed when you can turn your back on the fundamental needs of the people...”
And don't think that you can distract them anymore by playing off the young against the old… black against white, the poor against the less poor.
— The Candidate
Where have we heard this before?
The argument for new leadership is a generational one as well. We often conflate experience with longevity. A correlation may exist but one is not always a result of the other. While parties stake their support on long-held ideals they share with their constituents, pols sometimes fail to realize that while their message from year to year may be similar their audience is not. Generational change is ongoing even if our politics seem stuck in mud. When FDR won in 1932 he was just 40 years old. His opponent was 53. In 1960 JFK closed his inaugural address with a nod to generational change ushering in the baby boomer era who would replace the venerable WW II generation:
Let the word go forth... that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…
It has been a generation since Barack Obama helped define a new era in American politics with his own historic victory. The message that aroused one generation suddenly sounds tinny to the next.
It’s time. Some would say it is well past time we start looking for the party’s new leadership.
And it is time for current leadership who have served us well to pass on the torch and step aside.
