Local politics isn’t a Frank Capra movie; it’s every man for himself

By David McElroy · August 18, 2012

Director Frank Capra was a great filmmaker, but he used his talent to promote a utopian vision that never existed and never can exist. Capra was a progressive who clearly believed in the perfectibility of man — if only more people would faithfully follow the civic religion that worships the goodness of the “common man.”

In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Capra’s Jefferson Smith (memorably played by Jimmy Stewart) is a small-town nobody who’s suddenly propelled into Washington politics when he’s appointed to the U.S. Senate. Smith is a wide-eyed innocent who’s surrounded by crooks and thieves. He just wants to use the power of government to do good — for the boys of an organization he works with, mostly — but everyone else is in it for money and power.

It’s a good movie, even if it’s really corny and wildly two dimensional. If you watch it, you have the idea that everything could be great in this country if we would just trust the simpletons such as Smith, who live in the uncorrupted small towns of the country, far from the influence of the evils of Washington.

Those who believe in this great civic religion place a lot of their faith in government at the local level, as though there’s something magical and honest about a mayor or city council of 10,000 people — as opposed to the evil bigwigs in Washington or even some state capital.

The truth, though, is very different. The truth is that the evils of corruption and deception that Capra liked to show in his films are at least as evident at the small-town level. It might even be worse.

I was thinking about that Friday afternoon as I drove through a small city near my suburb. We’re in the midst of municipal elections in Alabama, so there are campaigns for mayor and city council going on everywhere. If you happen to know the stories behind these pure little hometown civic contests, you know out that they’re every bit as venal and corrupt as is politics at any other level.

If you listen to the people who run for these offices, they’re all in it for the common good. In reality, they’re frequently busybodies who simply like to be in charge. I can have at least some respect for the ideologues, although there aren’t that many of them, because they at least stand for something when they run. The people who scare me are those who simply think they’re smarter than everybody else — and who think they ought to be allowed to make up the rules that everyone else has to live by.

I started thinking about that driving through the nearby town — which I won’t name — because I happen to know some of the personalities involved. Some of the candidates (and incumbents) are simply control freaks. They don’t have much in the way of controlling principles. They just think they should be the ones who get to decide things — what kinds of signs people should have, who gets to do what with his property and a thousand other things that vary from place to place.

One of the questions that I commonly ask politicians is why they’re running for office. I get some interesting answers. I recently met a guy who’s a member of a city council in an upscale suburb of Birmingham and I asked him. Most of them at least try to pretend at first that it has to do with a desire to help people. But this guy didn’t bother. We were talking privately, so he just told me the truth.

“It’s really good for my business,” he said. “Lots of people who want favors from the city do business with me now so that I’ll help them out when they need something. So it’s worth a lot of money to me.”

And how do these races get funded? Are they all fueled by nickels and dimes of proud moms and brothers and neighbors who believe in these people? Every now and then, yes. Almost all the time, no. The races are funded by people who stand to gain something by having someone in office who’s sympathetic to his company or organization. Just this week, I had a professional tell me that he has to raise a lot of money in the next week for politicians in his town — because the “right” people being in office send a tremendous amount of money his way.

“It’s really because I care so much about the people,” he sarcastically joked.

If you talk to some of the people I’m talking about, you would assume it’s the people to blame. If we could just get the corrupt people out of the way — and trust the Jefferson Smiths of the world — government could do good for everyone. That’s certainly what Frank Capra wanted you to believe.

The truth is that the problem isn’t the individuals. The problem is the system itself. The problem is a system that gives anyone the right to make decisions and force other people to obey them.

As long as this coercive system is in place, it doesn’t matter whether the politicians involved are in Washington, in Sacramento or suburban Birmingham. The local folks might not be as slick. The dollars at stake might not be as huge. But as long as there’s control to be seized and money to be gained, evil people will find their way into power. What’s worse, even “good people” become evil when they start making decisions and insisting that others obey.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts