Of Governmental Obfuscation Back In The Day-Otto Preminger’s Film Adaptation Allen Drury’s Advise And  Consent (1960)

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

 

Advise and Consent, starring Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Franchot Tone, Don Murry, and an ensemble cast, directed by Otto Preminger, based on the novel by Allen   

 

For those who have forgotten or are too young to remember the seemingly endless obfuscations, bullyings, dirty tricks, ill-humored attacks and deep hubris of the Congressional set we are bombarded with these days is not of recent origin. Those of us who came of age, of political age in the time of the ill-fated Camelot of our youths know only too well the capacity of guys like one Lyndon Baines Johnson and one Richard Milhous Nixon, guys who for better or worse, mostly worse according to the historical record were actually Presidents of the United States their Congressional cronies (mostly Southern Democratic segregationists and red-neck rube Republicans from out in the heartland) to obfuscate, to bully, to do dirty tricks, to make ill-humored attacks and to act out of deep hubris. In some ways they would have had the current crop of Congress-people on their knees for lunch and had time for a nap. That brings us to this slice of life, this Congressional slice of life, particularly the Senate, film Advise and Consent from that ill-starred period based on the book by Allean Drury of the same name.     

Here’s how it played out then in the film and not too very far off in the normal course of governmental bickering then. The President, played by Franchot Tone, decided to nominate a long time governmental official, Leffingwell, played by Henry Fonda to be his Secretary of State. Such executive branch nominations under the separations of powers and check and balances reasoning behind the original constitution require the “advice and consent of the Senate to go through. That is the rub. Under ordinary circumstances such nominations are in the end whatever small hurdles are put before the nominees by the Presidents’ opponents or those who get a kick out of being contrarians are routinely processed. Not this nomination though.

Why? Well in those times mercifully past, mercifully passed maybe, the red scare Cold War night had the country in a deep freeze. Had average folk see reds under every bed, had every All-American kid putting the whammy on mommie the commie and that was on the rational days on the bad days they were ready to deep fry us with a quick nuclear strike just to keep us on our toes. The President’s nominee had been on the record as someone who was “soft on communism” maybe even a communist fellow-traveler or dupe himself.  That charge, or even the whiff of such accusations under ordinary circumstances then, who knows maybe now too although the red menace has been off the agenda for a while so I wonder where those “true believers” have been the last twenty-five years, would easily sink a nominee. And that was how it looked to one and all including the Majority leader of the Senate, played by Walter Pidgeon.

 

Despite Leffingwells’ lying, lying under oath, in other words he perjured himself, about his political past the President, ill and seemingly about to pass on, dug in his heels and against all conventional wisdom good judgment, and frighten fellow party officials  decided to push the nomination forward. That is where things get interesting from both the right, represented by Senator Cooley played by the old curmudgeon, a type long gone from the slick PR conscious politicos today, Charles Laughton who believed that Leffingwell was a sell-out, that he was in a word, a very strong political word at the time, now too an “appeaser” in the aftermath of the Munich capitulation by the West to Hitler just before World War II to the Russkies ready to blow us to smithereens. Strangely the right and left meet here in terms of sheer skullduggery since the leader of the “peace” faction used the dirty trick of exposing the homosexual past of a key Senator who was holding up bringing the Leffingwell nomination to a vote. Nasty stuff politics, the politics behind closed doors, the politics that makes the average citizen drossy and forgetful of the ballot box. Well the thing finally went to a vote by the films end. Guess what it ended in a tie. No nomination confirmed. No “advise and consent” pushed through. As for the why of why a tie meant no go in the constitutional process of the time watch the film. (Watch too the various historical anachronisms like the Vice President of the United States travelling on a commercial aircraft in what appeared to not even be first-class).