Who do you like next month? George Bailey or Mister Potter?
Bedford Falls was a lovely place, to be sure. The town and its people were humble, decent and basic, inclusive and thoughtful Americans who banded together to help one another through bad times and celebrated with reasonable abandon during good. The Bailey Building and Loan provided lower and middle income families opportunities to fund their humble, decent and basic American dreams of having a home. These folks would work hard, be thrifty and do the best they could to fulfill their contract with the lender and darned if they didn't do it, too.
It also offered a place for people to go without having to crawl to Potter, whose greedy capitalisto-fascism helped to erect high-priced, poorly maintained dwellings that were more like slums than homes. Some people had no choice, unable to find a way to cope with their own inadequacies to work with the system; others were forced by natural circumstances which neutralized their capacity to be self-sufficient and had little choice but to accept what was offered no matter how much they didn't want to; still others were lured by what must have been attractive come-ons but did not perceive the hidden costs and penalties that invariably kept them in debt and indentured to Henry Potter. No one wanted a welfare state but then again everyone knew the difference between that and helping one's fellow man and woman. Of course they knew: they valued education. Although they may have been simple folk, they were taught to revere the intellect, to engage the imagination, hell -- to read and write and think. Those were the days.
Sure, when George had his first transformative experience seeing what the world would have been like had he never been born, Bedford Falls -- now Pottersville -- had thrown off its sleepy mantle and became one wild place: dance halls, billiard parlors, commerce, crowds, profits. We even witnessed Violet Bix being hauled in for -- who knows -- giving gonorrhea to Mr. Gower for some quick moolah? The halcyon streets were now modern and rowdy. People still regarded themselves as proud Americans but they were hardened by need and greed. Their souls were as empty as their bellies. They didn't seem as happy as they were in a world with George Bailey, which is to say, a world with hope.
As simply as the lines are drawn between good and bad in Capra's classic, so are they drawn in this election. With every waffle, gaffe and stutter of the McCain campaign, every incitement of hatred and xenophobia whipped up by its shallow Shlockey Mom, every desperate attempt to relentlessly extrapolate a lie until it hopefully sticks, it is clear which of the movie's characters comes closest to being identified with McCain and his cam-pain machine: Mr. Potter, the meanest man in town.
As to who is as easily identifiable with George Bailey, I leave it to the discontented, lazy rabble to figure that one out.