State of the Union Night

 

We didn’t watch the state of the union speech Tuesday. Instead we watched The Dark Horse, a 1932 comedy staring Warren William, Bette Davis, and Guy Kibbee. It is my favorite movie about politics, and it was particularly appropriate on that night. The movie begins in a deadlocked political convention where a tricky maneuver by one faction backfires and leads to the nomination of an unknown and randomly selected dimwitted ignoramus (played by Kibbee) as his party’s candidate for governor. The party’s secretary (played by Davis) persuades its desperate leaders to hire a slick and shifty political consultant (played by William) to run the campaign and try to get the nitwit elected. 

The film depicts William’s efforts to put over the candidacy of the “dumbest human being I ever saw.” Highlights include Kibbee being trained to answer every question with an attempt at a thoughtful expression and a “yes, and then again no” and a debate in which both candidates planned identical opening remarks plagiarizing the same statement of Lincoln’s. William does his dishonest work so well - telling wets and dries, Republicans and Democrats that his man is fully on their side, getting Kibbee made an honorary Indian chief, staging a photo op of Kibbee as a great fisherman, and so on – that Kibbee becomes favored to win. However Kibbee had become  involved with William’s predatory ex-wife who connives with operatives of Kibbee’s opponent to entrap him in a “love nest” right before election day. William saves the day at some cost to himself and temporarily to his relationship with Davis, and Kibbee is elected in a landslide. The movie ends with Kibbee headed for the governor’s mansion and William and Davis off to Nevada to do it again for some other candidate. It is good, cynical, perceptive fun. Some people might say its premise is unrealistic or even outrageous. That would be a mistake in a country that has elected Donald Trump and Joe Biden back to back.