SWING VOTE ss Directed by Joshua Michael Stern Written by Stern and Jason Richman With Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Paula Patton, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane, and Stanley Tucci
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Ignorant clowns are but one segment of the larger, more defensible group known as swing voters. According to the Gallup Poll, about 23 percent of likely voters haven’t yet decided between John McCain and Barack Obama; a recent CBS/New York Times poll puts the figure at 36 percent. Some of these voters are badly needed moderates in a political landscape so polarized the federal government barely functions. Some are intelligent, reasonably well informed people who realize that both parties serve special interests and that Election Day is the only time independents have any power at all. But some of them are just ignorant clowns, more susceptible than most people to slick commercials, emotional appeals, and brazen distortions of fact. Such is the great paradox of electoral democracy: by the time the polls open, the voters with the most influence are those who deserve it the least.
Screenwriters Jason Richman and Joshua Michael Stern might have been inspired by Garson Kanin’s comedy The Great Man Votes (1939), with John Barrymore as an alcoholic ex-professor called upon to cast a critical vote in a big-city mayoral election. But by inflating the premise to the scale of a modern presidential race, and making their great man a clown so ignorant he’s never heard of Roe v. Wade, they shine a harsh light on what it takes to win the White House these days. The Republican incumbent, Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammer), and his Democratic challenger, Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper), each launch a full-court press for Bud’s vote. Boone dispatches NASCAR driver Richard Petty to make a personal appeal, invites Bud onto Air Force One for a beer, and lets him hold the “nuclear football.” Greenleaf counters with Willie Nelson, throws Bud a swanky party (with martini glasses full of Cheetos), and tries to pass himself off as a skeet shooter.
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