There's a stirring speech made late into Powell & Pressburger's excellent Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) wherein Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), the German friend of General Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesy) tries to explain why antiquated notions of right and wrong in warfare will not succeed against the Nazi menace. Seeing the film the other night, it struck me that the following dialogue made a fine comment about the upcoming election and my (and I'm sure others) general worry that the GOP is going to play dirty (again!)by accidentally misfiling absentee Obama votes in the swing states and other foul play, while the democrats just smile and do nothing to defend themselves, mistakenly believing that these things "just don't happen." 
Thanks to imdb.com for supplying the dialogue for me to cut and past here:
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: You commented on Nazi methods--foul fighting, bombing refugees, machine-gunning hospitals, lifeboats, lightships, bailed-out pilots--by saying that you despised them, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and that you would sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods.So here it is, even a hundred years later and we need Kretschmar-Schuldorff to get it into the heads of the people that every swing vote ballot box needs to be closely watched. We're fighting against the second most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - neo-conservatism, and their tactics are no less Nazi-ish and inhuman!
Clive Candy: So I would!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won't be any methods *but* Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent! I thought so myself in 1919!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't think you won it. We lost it -but you lost something, too. You forgot to learn the moral. Because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson twenty years ago and now you have to pay the school fees again. Some of you will learn quicker than the others, some of you will never learn it - because you've been educated to be a gentleman and a sportsman, in peace and in war. But Clive! [tenderly] Dear old Clive - this is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year... perhaps not even for a hundred years.
3 comments:
Great post. "Blimp" is one of my favorite movies, but every time I try to discuss it the overwhelming Britishness (which is so central to its genius) becomes an obstacle. Still, as you show, it has plenty to say about recent American politics, and politics in general.
Since you make a pretty heavily political argument here don't mind if I do the same. I think that if we're comparing the current Presidential race to the decline of war into "ends justify the means" type tactics, there's also a parallel with the friction between old guard (ie Clive Candy) and new guard (ie Spud Wilson, the solider that captures Candy's army in the war games that narratively frame the film). In the film Candy doesn't want to fight fire with fire because of his experiences winning with honor and dignity in the Boar and First World Wars -- he sees himself as morally distant from and superior to opponents who do not do the same. Spud Wilson, on the other hand, simply plays to win -- like the Nazis (or republicans?). He understands that all is "fair" in war.
A lot of people complain (and this is debatable) that the democrats did not fight fire with fire to enough of an extent in the last two elections (they were arguing about this on Bill Maher's HBO show just last week). But, it's a tough balance. Does anyone REALLY buy the explanation that just because your adversary is cheating or using ad hominem attacks, it's ok for you too? (I know that your post, Eric, was not meant to suggest this, but it's an inevitable question.) The problem is that today, cheaters prosper wildly, so the implication is that EVERYONE needs to get their hands dirty a little bit or they cannot compete. Staying out of the mud is practically un-American.
Which just brings me to the point that I think Obama has struck a very interesting balance in this campaign. He has not exactly fought dirty, but he has engaged with McCain at a very savvy guerrilla level. What about his 11th hour decision to not accept public financing? It was a borderline "sneaky" move. Or the fact that he refused to accompany McCain to pre-debate townhall meetings? This campaign has also gotten VERY negative on both sides of the fence, but I find Obama's type of negativity very intriguing. His ads may call McCain a lot of things ("liar," etc) but they stop short of the kind of vitriol that McCain is pumping out (terrorist, socialist, etc). The latest even has McCain suggesting that if Obama is elected, we will experience another 9/11 (re-appropriating some words from Joe Biden).
Obama is, I think, the happy medium between Spud and Clive Candy -- he's fighting fire with fire, but it's a different, more subtle kind of fire. He's almost proving that you can "cheat" a little bit to get the jump on your enemy while keeping your honor at the same time, which has largely been thought of as impossible (a kind of "gentleman's cheater"). Obama is the kind of leader I imagine Clive Candy became after the final frames of "Blimp," watching the "flood" waters recede and thinking that Spud's trick had a great deal of merit after all.
And further more this approach is working. Obama has comfy leads in a handful of "red" states, not to mention swingies, and he's maintained an air of dignity and propriety throughout the last month. That could of course change between now and election night but either way the GOP will have to rig a whole lot more than they did in 2000 to achieve the same results.
And there's also that old adage "Fool me once..."
Anyway, sorry for the long-winded comment :)
Great comment, thanks Jon! I am cheered by your point about the "gentleman cheater" - that's what we need! As an old 1970s SNL "fake commercial" once put it: "Go Spud!"
Black Orpheus
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