Spencer Tracy

"The State of the Union" (1948)

September 26, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

State of the UnionIn the Frank Capra film "State of the Union," Republicans hoping to unseat Harry Truman recruit wealthy industrialist Grant Matthews (played by Spencer Tracy) to run for the 1948 GOP presidential nomination. Matthews gets talked into it, but soon decides he'll be different by telling people exactly what he thinks. This horrifies his veteran campaign team. They want him, for example, to talk to a conference of business executives about the "binding shackles of government," and promise to fix that if elected. Matthews calls that doubletalk.

He thinks Americans hunger for the truth, and he aims to let voters know exactly what his views are. No, no, no, say his staff. People are too lazy to vote in the primaries, they say, so Matthews has to be mealy-mouthed, sort of like an early Mitt Romney. "We've got to bring you into that convention without any enemies," insists campaign strategist Jim Conover (Adolph Menjou).