Screening Liberally Big Picture: What The Candidate Got Right - And What It Got Wrong

They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided...You have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.
- Presidential candidate Barack Obama, Iowa victory rally

They said when we got into this we didn't have a chance. They said there was nothing we could do...Well, I'm not sorry, and I hope you're not sorry. I think we've proved our point.
- Gubernatorial candidate Neil Atkinson (Joseph Miksak), California campaign rally

A certain loneliness comes with believing your politics are unpopular. Every liberal that's been tagged "the crazy left-wing radical niece" at Thanksgiving dinner or labeled "a hippie" in high school knows this intimately - when you associate strongly with a way of looking at the world and everyone in your vicinity finds your opinions laughable, it's hard not to feel a twinge of melancholy.

Believing that your politics are out of place in your hometown, however, is much less severe than a belief that your politics are out of place in your country. For a liberal to buy into the DLC's proposition that progressive policies are inherently disliked by the populace, that we have to tack right for reasons of pragmatism alone, is to believe that while we can occasionally make a long-term shift here and there, we basically have to wake up to the fact that our country will never quite accept us. The Candidate, a biting 1972 political comedy with Robert Redford playing the titular Bill McKay, accepts half of the DLC's proposition: progressive politics won't sell, but there's no prescriptions to be made - politics is an exercise in loneliness and rejection, and there's nothing one can do to make it any better.

McKay, at the film's start, is a community organizer in Southern California, fighting for civil rights cases on behalf of latino neighborhoods and generally doing everything he can to disassociate himself from his father, the former conservative Democratic governor of California. He gets an unexpected visit from Lucas (Peter Boyle), an old campaign hand trying to recruit him as a Democratic candidate for California's senate seat. The pitch is enticing. The popular, archconservative incumbent, who has the delightfully implausible name of Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter), is a shoo-in for reelection - McKay would not be playing to win. In fact, McKay's hopeless run would merely be a platform to speak his mind on the politically unsavory issues that really matter to him, poverty and race relations. After some vacillation, McKay signs on, and thus, the film strongly implies, seals his doom.

This suggestion begins subtly. Having seen McKay's ease of connection with his clients in legal services, we're jarred by the awkwardness of his interactions - this is not just poor public speaking on McKay's part, this is visible discomfort in the role of candidate, a role the entire campaign was originally meant to subvert. It soon becomes clear that no matter how much McKay intends to lose, the very act of advocating for one's self means selling one's self - a distancing maneuver which he never had to face as a community organizer.

But there's a more important component to the awkwardness, and ironically enough it's a testament to The Candidate's faith in its audience that it doesn't hit us over the head with it: while McKay the organizer could choose his clients, McKay the candidate can't choose his electorate. The Candidate, more than most political films, examines the fear that comes with immediately becoming a public figure, the elevation of the mundane crazy heckler to a potential assasin, the constant threat that an off-hand comment will unspool everything, the need to go through endless bottles of Purell. In a key scene, a seemingly mentally ill bystander sidles up to McKay and asks repeatedly, "What do you think of my dog?" as handlers try to lead McKay elsewhere. "It's a fine dog," McKay manages unconvincingly.

The scene is unnerving, sure, but more unnerving is the juxtaposition of the scene with standard campaign-stump pablum - in between being asked about a favorite local issue and to kiss a baby, the only thing that makes the question of appraising one's dog menacing is the tone in which it's asked. The Candidate seems to wonder out loud, how can we expect these figures to engage with a public that acts so banally in its one opportunity to engage? (One thinks of the advice given to  Hillary Clinton to wear her hair in the fashion of Paris Hilton.)

As it becomes clear that his current path will lead him to be on the losing end of a 30-70 blowout, McKay starts listening to the DLC-style advisors on the campaign trail - he doesn't expect to win, but he'd rather not be humiliated. He stops talking about the working poor and environmental issues. He straddles the line on abortion. He does everything he can to look like part of the mushy middle. And it works. In the world of The Candidate, the honestly progressive McKay is a sure loser next to the inauthentically centrist McKay.

We live in an era where the most exciting progressive strategists recognize that progressive policies are popular - and thank goodness. We're told near the beginning of The Candidate that "politics is bullshit," but its own stance is much starker than that. For The Candidate, politics is a lose-lose proposition - you either express your true beliefs, in which case you lose the election, or you play the role of a meaningless center, in which case you lose your soul. The only winning move is not to play.