Movie Monday: Where Has Mr. Smith Gone?

In today’s political culture, many point to an unacceptable growth in government power and influence as a reason why our nation is going broke and our rights are being violated. Many small-government activists like to point to a time long ago when Washington was not as big as it is today, when budgets were manageable and our representatives were more responsive to their constituents. In reality, our government was just as corrupt seventy years ago as it is today, and a good example of this time period was in the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

I watched this film last night, and it was an interesting movie because it showed how Washington did businesses many years ago, as well as a window into the political culture of the time. In the film, Jefferson Smith (played by legendary actor James Stewart), a “Boy Rangers” leader, is sent to the Senate by the Governor of his state to fill a vacancy caused by his predecessor’s death, under the assumption that he would be easily controlled and manipulated. His first act, however, is to get a national boys camp built in his home state, which infuriates some of the Senators who were going to use that proposed site as a dam to please the political machine in that state. They try to paint Smith as a fraudulent man who wants to use the camp for personal profit, and uses a friendly media source to paint him as a liar, even going as far as to twist facts around. (surprise, surprise!)

As the Senators prepare to expel him from the Senate, Smith launches a 25-hour filibuster to prevent the motion from coming to the floor, and to give his Boy Rangers back home time to make the truth known to the community. However, the political machine does everything it can to disrupt this effort, which even included physically attacking pro-Smith demonstrators and children. Eventually, Mr. Smith confronts Senator Paine, his in-state colleague and one of the guys involved in the cover-up, which leads to Mr. Paine confessing that the whole case was a plot to smear Mr. Smith to benefit the political machine that controls the state’s media and politicians.

The movie also shows how much things have changed in the seventy years since the film was made. The most obvious of which being that there were only 96 senators at the time (Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states yet). Also, Mr. Smith had only one assistant, the attractive Clarissa Saunders (played by Jean Arthur), and he even opens his own letters. Nowadays, a Senator will have close to ten assistants, not to mention the dozens of staff members in Committee Rooms and on the Senate floor. In the movie, it was also common to see the gallery of the Senate packed with on-lookers who could yell and cheer as much as they wanted, and stay there all day if they so chose. Today, one can only enter the gallery while on a tour of the Capitol, which has to be arranged ahead of time by contacting your representatives, and you can only sit there for ten minutes before being asked to leave.

In the movie, Mr. Smith could filibuster for as long as he could stand, and there was no way to stop him from doing so. Since then, new laws have been passed that allows the Senate to put aside filibustered legislation and move on with their agenda, but there is still room to filibuster, like Senator Rand Paul’s seven-hour filibuster of the Patriot Act this summer and Senator Bernie Sanders’ eight-hour filibuster of the Bush tax cuts last winter.

Unfortunately, there are some things that have not changed. We’d like to think the political corruption on display in the movie was just a Hollywood addition, but it’s real, and still exists. Too often do politicians use public money to steer projects to their home districts and into the pockets of special interests, like Senator Paine’s political machine. Also still in existence is a media that is too friendly to Washington, and can be twisted to favor a certain few politicians, even if it means distorting facts. The media exists as a check on government actions, not to prop them up. Today, like in the movie, mainstream news is more bent on headlines and profits than actual reporting, which does a disservice to the government and to its readers who expect good commentary and reporting in exchange for their subscription fees.

We need more Mr. Smiths in Washington these days to expose political corruption that still exists within our government. That role can be filled by the few officials that refuse to be bound by party ideology or special interests, who we highlight in this blog from time to time, like Rand Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul. However, greed is still rampant, and for it to really be expelled from Washington, it’s going to need a lot more Mr. Smiths to root out the Paines. Then government can return to “by the people, for the people.”

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