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By
WADE GOSSETT
In 1994 Republican hero Oliver North decided to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia. His Democratic opponent was the hapless, silly Chuck Robb, whose sexual dalliances almost sunk his campaign. Robb still won, but he is not the subject of "A Perfect Candidate." North is.
And for reasons that are not immediately apparent North allowed documentary filmmakers R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor unprecedented freedom to cover his failed campaign.
Oliver North is one of the strangest creations of our mentally challenged press: If you ask most regular people (I exclude wingnuts who listen to his rabid radio show) what they know about him, they'll probably give you a semi-heroic account, one about a stalwart Marine officer who stood up to Democratic wieners in the Senate. They will probably "remember" how Americans who watched the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 crowned North a hero after his testimony.
Well, things did not happen exactly like that. In fact, as Eric Alterman's book "When Presidents Lie" documents, the perception that North was a hero was not due to a spontaneous reaction from the American population, but a media myth created by conservatives and fed to our perpetually gullible press. As
Alterman reports, Time magazine arbitrarily
stated that, "...the Boy Scout and patriot had the nation rooting for him," while Newsweek exclaimed that North "...somehow embodied Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and John Wayne in one bemedaled uniform."
As Alterman patiently explains, "The coverage in both newsweeklies was directly contradicted by published polls at the time, including their own. Time's own poll showed that 61 percent believed that the term 'national hero' did not describe North. According to Newsweek's polls, 45 percent of respondents believed North was a patriot and a hero, while 48 percent did not. On July 9, 1987 The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather reported, without evidence, that 'ninety-six percent of you back North up, saying you approve of his actions.' The broadcast went on to compare North to Rambo and Dirty Harry. Overall, in four separate polls taken in June and July of 1987, between 68 and 81 percent of Americans questioned disagreed with the appellation
'hero' when applied to Oliver North. The labels 'villain,' 'victim,' 'dangerous,' 'fanatic,' and 'can be bought' proved considerably more popular."
This is who Oliver North was, an admitted liar (one scene in "A Perfect Candidate" shows North during his 1987 immunized Congressional testimony, admitting that he lied to Congress) who garnered no sympathy from Americans until our press labeled him a hero.
Like most public liars, North always struck me as a sociopath. That is, most normal people will tend to feel bad after being caught in a lie, and embarrassment would compel them to shy away from the limelight. Not sociopaths, though. They feel total comfort in lying, and they'll even lie about lying
-- as North does in another scene from in "Perfect Candidate":
He tells unsuspecting high school students that he never lied to Congress and accuses the press (the so-called "liberal press") of having lied about his shenanigans.
North's apparent sociopathy may also explain why he allowed Cutler and Van Taylor Cutler so much unfettered access to his campaign's inner workings (in an audio commentary track the filmmakers themselves wonder how they managed to get North's people to provide them with so much cooperation).
But like others who suffer from the mental ailment, North has a huge ego
and few scruples. In his own mind he can do no
wrong. He was apparently perfectly comfortable with having his campaign documented, because he does
not experience the same pangs of conscience normal people experience when they do something bad -- and especially when they are caught doing something
bad. And yes, folks we see both North and his campaign managers engaged in behavior that is unseemly and unethical. North and his people are revealed to be profane and cynical, looking for dirt on Robb, exploiting their audience's prejudices, and often treating the voters as rubes. The documentary has many scenes of North's people sitting down to dinner (they seem to
be eating all the time) and trying to hatch one
underhanded ploy after another to take Robb down. There is no talk of policy, no illusions of idealism
(the irony is that North run on the "integrity" platform).
"A Perfect Candidate" would be a comedy if it weren't for the frequent glimpses into the mentality of the Republican voter. That's when it
becomes downright depressing. For instance, one North voter proudly asks her young son, who is holding his rifle, what he's going to do with it. He responds, "To shoot ducks and Democrats." Oy!
Apart from the commentary track, the DVD includes filmographies and newspaper clippings showing North's reactions to the film. True to form, North wonders how he could be fooled into letting Cutler and Van Taylor document his mendacities. You see, it is not his campaign's behavior that was unethical, it was the filmmakers who caught it on film!
That says it all. |
