The battle of the dwarves: Creepy versus Dopey. Blind ambition versus bland ignorance. The grasping, vicious mercenary who would pimp out his own family to put himself in power, versus the amiable dunce who's not really sure why he's running or whether he can get to the end of a sentence without a committing a syntactical hate crime. Do you ever get the feeling you've seen all this before?
Well if you've seen "Election," the 1999 comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick – you have. And if you haven't seen "Election," rent it tonight instead of watching the debate. Everything that's going on in the current, national race – right down to the candidates – is encapsulated in this brilliant little film. And believe me, it plays better as farce than as tragedy.
This crass but hilarious movie might have been subtitled "Everything I Really Needed to Know About Politics and Human Nature I Learned in High School." In it, Matthew Broderick plays Jim McAllister, an earnest high-school history teacher who genuinely believes the good-government nostrums he imparts to his students. Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, a junior at Carver High, and just the sort of grotesquely ambitious student-council type that most of us knew and hated in high school. Tracy's Machiavellian brownnosing and ravenous lust for power appalls McCallister. When she stands unopposed in the election for student body president, McAllister decides that he has to stop her. He recruits junior Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), Carver High's first-string quarterback, who's sitting out the season with a broken leg. A gregarious, good-hearted dope beloved by jocks and dorks alike, Paul never knew he had political ambitions and aptitude until Mr. McAllister so informed him. Despite his intellectual limitations, Paul decides he's game to give politics a try.
If the parallels to our current, unappetizing menu of electoral choices aren't obvious by now, they certainly will be when you watch the scene where the candidates give their campaign speeches in the school gymnasium. Paul is pure Dubya. Awkward, innocent, and dumb as a brick, he grins endearingly after he finishes sounding out the speech that his girlfriend has written for him. And Tracy Flick's speech is vintage Al Gore: condescending, pedantic, prissy, and insincere. Like Gore, Tracy makes a point of singling out individual voters by name, to exemplify the kind of hapless schmucks her administration will benefit. "During this campaign," she declares, "I've spoken with many of you about your many concerns. I spoke with Eliza Ramirez, a freshman, who said she feels alienated from her own homeroom. I spoke with sophomore Reggie Banks, who says his mother works in the cafeteria and can't afford to buy him enough spiral notebooks for his classes." This last prompts shouts of derision from a troublemaker in the bleachers: "Eat me! Eat me raw!!" (Is there any way to sneak that kid into tonight's town-hall-style debate?)
The election in "Election" is better than the real thing in many ways, not the least of which is that in the movie, there's no chance of Tracy Flick ending up with access to nuclear weapons. So stay away from reality programming tonight. If you watch the presidential debate, you can look forward to a series of harrowing, white-knuckle moments every time Dubya opens his mouth and begins talking. (Have you ever seen another candidate that makes normal human conversation seem so much like a high-wire act?) But if you watch "Election," you'll get the perverse joy of watching Mr. McAllister's life unravel as he slowly comes to the realization that the Tracy Flicks of the world just might be unstoppable. Watch the debate, and you'll find yourself confused and unsettled by Al Gore's attempts to approximate the behavior of a carbon-based life-form. But watch "Election," and you'll get to see the lovely Reese Witherspoon, who as Tracy Flick, is a major improvement over Gore, in that she manages to be adorable as well as contemptible.
But in one significant respect, the parallel to the Gore-Bush race breaks down. In the election in "Election," there's an authentic and highly visible protest candidate with the ability to animate the libertarian portion of the electorate. Sophomore Tammy Metzler, Paul Metzler's lesbian sister, enters the race in a fit of pique, and threatens to unite the disaffected and bring the whole edifice of student government crashing to the ground. Tammy's speech is good enough to quote at length:
"Who cares about this stupid election? Do you really think it's gonna change anything around here? Make one single person smarter, or happier, or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens every year. And everyone makes the same pathetic promises so they can get elected and put it on their transcripts to get into college. So vote for me. Because I don't even want to go to college. And I don't care. And as president, I won't do anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected, I will immediately dismantle the student government so that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these stupid assemblies again!" (Loud cheers)
"Or don't vote for me! Who cares? Don't vote at all!!" (Louder cheers, shouts of "Tamm-ee! Tamm-ee!")
Amen, sister. If only you were in this race.
October 17, 2000
Gene Healy is an attorney practicing in Northern Virginia.
