Back to the Future: Sinclair Lewis & Robert Penn Warren Were Dead On About Donald Trump . . . Just Ask Huey Long (#1,013)
Redgrave, Witty and Lockwood in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938)
This coming Thursday I will be concluding a 6-week film class at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, entitled Knights and Dames: Cinematic Royalty. What links the six films together is that each is produced, directed, or written by, as well as starring titled Brits such as Barons Laurence Olivier, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Miles; Knights Sir John Mills, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir David Lean and Sir Michael Redgrave and Dames Celia Johnson, Judy Dench, Angela Lansbury and Maggie Smith. The last of these films the one I shall be screening this Thursday, is a classic 1938 mystery starring Sir Michael Redgrave, Dame Mae Witty and Margaret Lockwood (CBE) and directed by no less than Sir Alfred Hitchcock. The film bears - in light of this Tuesday’s national election and where your political sentiments may reside – a title which is either hopeful or deeply eerie: The Lady Vanishes.
Thank G-d for my film courses . . . as well as the literally dozens of hours I spend each week vetting medical research protocols and consent documents; performing rabbinic functions; and researching and writing at least one 1,000+ word blog article. Otherwise, I would be even more involved in the various political races than I already am. Like you, I receive tons and tons of email requests every hour on the hour from candidates begging me to save democracy by donating as much as I can . . . which I do. I pray that there will be a significant drop-off in the texts and emails after this Tuesday. Like many, I rise and fall with each new poll - although after after spending more than a half century in and around the political world, I should know better; polls are mere snapshots, not chronicles. I too cringe at every gaff, distortion, verbal attack or sign of incipient dementia coming from IT, while glorying at V.P. Harris’ ability to charm, inform and uplift a crowd. Likewise, I wonder how anyone with half a brain (or a passionate love for America, warts and all) could ever vote for a twice-impeached, misogynistic, convicted felon whose psychopathology would have caused Sigmund Freud to change professions.
When it came to thinking about what my final pre-Election Day essay should be, I began feeling a brain cramp of agonizing proportions welling up and soon to be enveloping me. Call it PEDM (“Pre-Election Day Malaise”) I knew that, were I to manage to put all I’m thinking, feeling, fearing and fretting about into a single piece, it could easily require 50,000 words, as well as a minimum of a case-and-a-half of Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth. Believe me: writing while imbibing can only lead to incomprehensible gibberish. And so, after much thought, I’ve decided to republish an essay from June, 2020 . . . during the last presidential election. Any prescience it may show is purely unintentional; I do not own a crystal ball, just a smattering of knowedge.
And so, without further ado, let’s go "forward into the past” and meet up with a cast of characters known to most political cognoscenti. The original title was Sinclair Lewis & Robert Penn Warren Were Dead On About Donald Trump . . . Just Ask Huey Long:
Shortly after his September 10, 1935 assassination at the hands of Dr. Carl Weiss, Louisiana Governor/Senator Huey Long’s final work (and second biography), My First Days in the White House was published by The Telegraph Press. Unlike his best-selling autobiography Every Man a King, My First Days in the White House is more of a novella (barely 100 pages) in which “The Kingfish” (as he was commonly known) outlines both his presidential platform and precisely who he would name to his Cabinet. In many regards, Long comes off as a Socialist. The main thrust of his presidency would be his “Share the Wealth” program, which called for higher taxes on the wealthy (which would provide every American with a guaranteed annual income of $5,000.00, universal healthcare, and increased spending on public works, education and old-age pensions. His favorite slogan was “Everyman a King!”
Long was the kind of politician Americans either loved or hated. The poor and downtrodden loved him for his populist progressivism; the middle-class and wealthy abhorred him for the autocratic means by which he sought to get what he wanted. In his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, novelist Sinclair Lewis used Long as the model for Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician who wins the 1936 presidential election on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and provide each citizen $5,000 a year. Once elected, he rapidly outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the Minute Men. They terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of Windrip and his "corporatist” regime.
11 years later (1946), Pulitzer-prize winning poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren turned the Kingfish into Willie Stark, the lead character in All the King’s Men. In this novel, Willie, like Huey, is a small-town southern lawyer who, starting out as a man-of-the-people populist, climbs the political ladder, eventually becoming the dictatorial governor of his state, backed by his own military. Like Huey Long, Willie Stark is assassinated by a doctor who in turn is killed on the spot by the governor’s bodyguards. In passing, it should also be noted that the 1953 film A Lion Is in the Streets, adapted from Adria Locke Langley’s 1946 novel, starred James Cagney as the Huey Long-like southern populist politician Hank Martin, was also based on the Kingfish.
To date, there have been more biographies, novels and movies based on Huey Long than any other Louisianan. He captures our attention because of his audacity, the adoration showered upon him by the little guy, his dangerous turn towards autocracy and the fact that he came the closest to being America’s first dictator. Sinclair Lewis, Robert Penn Warren and Adria Locke Langley all understood just how dangerous the man and his movement was . . . and how much divisiveness some politicians can foist upon the nation.
In many regards, Donald J. Trump shares both character strengths and flaws with the Kingfish . . . and his literary doppelgängers. Both are self-centered egotists whose personal insecurity makes them more fearful of losing than hopeful of winning. Both share a type of charisma which is alluring to many, and repellant to many more. Unlike Donald Trump, Huey Long - and Willie Stark and Hank Martin - are well disciplined and, for the most part, manage to stay on message most of the time.
Not so ‘45.
This point was forcefully made in a recent interview in which Fox entertainer - and Trump favorite - Sean Hannity threw a nerf ball question 45’s way. Here’s the transcript of both question and answer:
Hannity: If you hear in 131 days from now at some point in the night or early morning, ‘We can now project Donald J. Trump has been reelected the 45th President of the United States’ - let’s talk. What’s at stake in this election as you compare and contrast, and what are your top priority items for a second term?
Trump: Well, one of the things that will be equally great: you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington I think 17 times, all of a sudden, I’m President of the United States, you know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady and I say, ‘This is great.’ But I don’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody. And I have great people in my administration. You make some mistakes, like you know an idiot like Bolton, all he wanted to do is drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.
We can see that when asked what his top priorities items were for a second term, Trump did not articulate a single item. Instead, he offered a stream-of-consciousness narrative about the importance of the word “experience,” explained how he hadn’t spent much time in Washington prior to becoming president, and derided John Bolton (his former National Security Advisor, who had just published an embarrassing book (The Room Where it Happened) about his experiences in the Trump administration) as an “idiot.”
Compare this to Huey Long, who even before he announced his candidacy for the 1936 Democratic presidential nomination, published a novella in which he clearly laid out what his priorities would be, what direction he wished to lead the nation, how he would deal with the rest of the world, and who his advisers would be. Audaciously (and perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Long named General Smedley Butler Secretary of War, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt Secretary of the Navy, former President Herbert Hoover Secretary of Commerce, and Isolationist Idaho Senator William Borah Secretary of State.
One wonders who will be the first novelist/satirist or screenwriter to turn Donald Trump into a fictional character. That character definitely will not be a poor southern good-ole-boy like Willie Stark, nor a New England everyman like Buzz Windrip. And unlike Huey Long, he will definitely not be an avowed enemy of Wall Street and the hyper wealthy. Whoever that fictional character will be, one thing is certain: he will, incongruously, have the devotion of middle America - what Nixon and now Trump refer to as the “Silent Majority,” and Buzz Windrip as “The Forgotten Men.” It will remain for future historians to figure out just how it was that a lying, larcenous, immoral supposed multi-billionaire could earn the undying allegiance of the undereducated, the hyper-religious and the believers in conspiracy. . .
(It should be noted that there is a recently released (well, sort of “released”) biopic about IT’s early pre-political days called “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as IT, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and Mark Rendell as Roger Stone. Even more fascinating than the movie (which currently has a 7.2 rating on IMDB and 82% on Rotten Tomatoes) is the backstory of the near impossibility of getting the film released due to the fear that the film’s eponymous pitchman would do what he does with such gay abandon: sue, sue, sue).
Lastly, a brief clip from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, where his character, Charles Foster Kane’s staff is waiting for election results:
And so here we are, back in the present and waiting for the future.
See you next week. I wonder if we will be any closer to knowing who “won” the election . . .
Copyright©2020, 2024, Kurt F. Stone