“Subsidizing people’’ on welfare went out with Bill Clinton in 1996. Rams’ locker room and “seeing all those big tough guys down on their knees in a simple moment of prayer,’’ nothing clangs or seems awkward. When the censorious Jarmon fumes about the threats to America from “a collectivist state,’’ when he says “We’re going to tell Big Brother to get lost,’’ when he sheds a crocodile tear over visiting the L.A. But the conservative’s statements in the film are squarely in the mainstream of Republican political dialogue today, while the liberal’s views now seem hopelessly far out. But the real value of this cultural artifact is the lens it provides on the country’s ideological shift over the past 40 years.īoth McKay and his conservative opponent Crocker Jarmon - a powerful incumbent who doesn’t realize the times they are a-changin’ - are broadly drawn caricatures in the original screenplay.

McKay’s frustrations with the hypocrisy and absurdity of campaigning ring true today. The film is a satire - gentle by today’s standards - of our electoral system, in which an idealistic young lawyer named Bill McKay (Redford) is persuaded to run for US Senate, losing his innocence even as he wins office. IN THE spirit of the political season, I recently watched Robert Redford’s movie “The Candidate,’’ first released in 1972. President Richard Nixon applauds at a Beverly Hills dinner in 1973.

Resistance by Bill McCay