Why Every Politician Should Go See "Swing Vote"

By Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post. Posted August 7, 2008.

The makers of Swing Vote, the new film starring Kevin Costner, have pulled off a rare double play, producing a smart political satire that is also heartfelt and moving. It's also a film that turns out to be remarkably relevant to the 2008 race.

Costner plays Ernie "Bud" Johnson, a beer-drinking, unemployed resident of Texico, New Mexico who as fate -- and a voting machine error -- would have it, will single-handedly decide a presidential election (sure, it's high concept, but don't forget that in 2000 New Mexico was decided by just 366 votes). The media descends on him, as do both presidential candidates and their win-at-all-costs campaign managers.

The film has lots to say about -- and gets plenty of laughs from -- the evils of modern campaigns: pollsters, lobbyists, focus groups, and the inevitable mudslinging and negative ads. The film features a bunch of satiric smear ads launched by the competing candidates -- incumbent GOP President Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammar) and his Democratic challenger, Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). You can see them here, here, here, here, and here

But as ludicrous and over-the-top as the film's negative ads are, none of them can hold a candle to the absurd ads unleashed last week by the McCain camp and the RNC.

Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? Really? David Hasselhoff? John McCain has been waiting his whole life to run for president and the best he's got is Britney, Paris, and the Hoff? And Moses? Everything about the McCain media reeks of desperation -- and a stunning disconnect from popular culture. Does the McCain campaign's computers have Google software than can only go back to 2003? And the RNC's ad ended with a riff on Leo DiCaprio in Titanic. That was 1997. When John McCain still had principles.

The film shows how, in their hunger to win, the candidates are willing to say or do just about anything -- and chalk it up to the price of doing business. At one point near the end of the film, both candidates have crises of conscience. President Boone, disgusted at his own willingness to abandon his core principles to court voters -- "dancing the dance," as his campaign manager calls it -- wonders aloud, "What are we about?" To which his campaign manager replies: "Winning. If we don't win, you can't do what you set out to do. And everything you've done won't matter."

But even the two campaign managers -- who are the personification of cynicism -- eventually admit the emptiness of that realpolitik rationalization. When one of them bemoans "the whole bullshit system," the other reminds him: "We are the system. If it's bullshit, it's because we're bullshit."

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