Sunday, October 24, 2004
For Real.
So I've been watching Tanner '88 in the new, shiny Criterion Collection edition, and I have to say, it's a welcome relief from obsessively following the current election. T88 was a collaboration between Robert Altman & Gary Trudaeu that followed a fictional candidate through the election process. The great thing is, they shot it all on video and just kind of showed up at campaign events, so the cameos are pretty incredible. Anyway, I'll post more about this later. But in Criterion's edition, each episode is headed by an interview with cast members playing themselves sixteen years later (in part as a promo for Tanner on Tanner, which has been airing on the Sundance Channel). Point was, I thought you guys might enjoy the older, wiser Tanner's intro to the last episode, a defense of people like Karl Rove. At this point, he's teaching history at the University of Michigan. Billy, who he mentions, was a political operative (played by Harry Anderson!) who ran Tanner's attempt to prevent Dukakis from getting the nomination through a challenge at the convention. Anyway:
I thought that was pretty well-put. If there's one take-home lesson from voting for Nader in 2000, it's that there are no moral victories in politics. More about this series later.
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TANNER
You know, I've had Billy come here
to lecture my students, and they
eat him up. I think it's because a
lot of them are mistrustful of what
they see in politics, and Billy's
job is about what you don't see.
It's about process. And to a
generation that's learned to
deconstruct everything, the
mechanics that underlie a campaign
is the only thing that seems real
to them. What they miss, of
course, is what makes Billy so
good, which is that he believes in
what he does. He believes that if
he does his job well, the better
man or woman might win, and that's
good for the country. They all
believed that, everyone who worked
on my campaign. And I wish, uh, I
hadn't let them down.
INTERVIEWER
Let them down? How? By losing?
TANNER
No. By running. They should have
been working for someone who could
win. I understand that now. There
are no moral victories in politics.
There's only winning. And if you
have even the slightest doubt about
that, you shouldn't be in it. You
should move aside for those who
care enough to do what it takes to
win. And I say that without any
bitterness or cynicism. I like how
our electoral process works. I
teach it. But the people who
succeed in politics aren't like you
or me. Especially me.
I thought that was pretty well-put. If there's one take-home lesson from voting for Nader in 2000, it's that there are no moral victories in politics. More about this series later.
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