DOUBLE FEATURE 09.25.20
Wag the Dog + All The President's Men
With election season upon us, it seems a ripe time to pair two political films for the weekend. This election promises to be like no other. Our current president recently declared that should he lose, he has no intention of abiding by a peaceful transfer of power. Right now, he continues to sabotage the election by condemning mail-in ballots, calling them flawed and unreliable. The need for mail-in votes is, of course, the result of Covid-19, as many people will be reluctant if not physically unable to vote in-person. And the pandemic, or at least the catastrophic scale of it in North America, can be partially attributed to this same president’s early and repeated denial of its potency. It is a widespread belief that, had the federal government acted sooner on its knowledge, lives could have been saved.
What knowledge did it have? Legendary reporter Bob Woodward recently revealed the president knew how deadly and contagious Covid-19 was as far back as the beginning of the year. Trump told Woodward during a February 8 recorded interview, “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed … It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff.”
While this revelation is unlikely to have a meaningful impact, it is a testament to Woodward’s staying power, who, along with Carl Bernstein and the staff of the Washington Post, took down President Nixon by revealing his role in the Watergate scandal. Watergate led to Nixon’s impeachment and, ultimately, his resignation after being elected to a second term.
Arguably the best newsroom film ever, All the President’s Men tells the true story of how these dauntless journalists, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, broke the story. The themes in the film, among them the sanctity of the press’s freedom, could not be more relevant in the present day, as the media has been under continuous attack and threat by the current administration since January 20, 2017, Trump’s inauguration day. The film is also very much of its time but in the best possible ways. Remember the rotary phone? It is a central character in the movie, as a significant part of the action involves the reporters dialing in pursuit of leads. Tracking down information also relied on big, fat phonebooks to look up numbers and addresses. They were vital, featured extras, too. And let’s not forget about the often-scene-stealing typewriter! If only writing sounded like it used to. The hands-on manual investigative reporting is very much the action and drama of the film. In this way, All the President’s Men could not be made today, because, let’s face it — nothing is exciting about watching someone dial a cell phone.
Speaking of impeachment . . .
Until the pandemic took hold of the nation, the dominant subject of the news cycle was the impeachment trial of the 45th president of the United States. It is hard to remember as it seems like eons have passed, but it was only mid-December 2019 when the House of Representatives initiated proceedings. Three weeks later, on January 3, President Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. While there was no contesting that Suleimani, designated a terrorist by the U.S., was a powerful and dangerous enemy, Trump’s assassination order’s timing was noteworthy. Then-Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren went as far as to suggest that Trump took action when he did to distract the country from his trial, essentially accusing the president of wagging the dog.
“Why does the dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.” So begins Barry Levinson’s prophetic 1997 film, Wag the Dog. While the expression predates the film, the release predated by a mere six months the Clinton administration’s bombing of Iran. It happened smack-dab in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s subsequent impeachment trial. In the film, Robert De Niro played a spin doctor hired to help the president make a sex-scandal disappear. Also employed by the administration is a Hollywood producer, played by Hoffman, to fabricate a war to distract from the scandal (note that Hoffman’s character is the diametric opposite of his intrepid-pursuer-of-truth Bernstein in All the President’s Men). At one point in the film, De Niro’s Conrad Brean says, “Change the story, change the lede . . . if it’s a story and it breaks, they are going to have to run with it.” When the U.S. bombs another nation, responsible news sources will put the story on the front page or at the top of a newscast, regardless of what else is going on.
Like it or not, we’ve got a brilliant tail running the show. Let’s see if the dog manages to catch up come November.
VOTE!