[It is hard to work out whether the…]

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It is hard to work out whether the "seduction" in this superficial film is a reference to Joe Tynan's political degeneration or to his physical seduction by a •J.F. Kennedy woman lawyer who him with a court case.

Alan Alda plays a rising 'liberal' Democrat politician from New York who is headed for the US Presidency. The film focuses on the way he leaps from bandwagon to bandwagon in his campaign.

For him politics is simply a career. He sees it as more important than his personal relationships or his feelings for his daughter.

His every move is a manoevie. He only backs a struggle against a racist ruling by the Supreme Court when it is clear that he can win.

The film has problems in depicting any actual degeneration in lynan. From the outset he is a' cynical opportunistcompiling a filing system on men he doesn't know in order to ingratiate himself through touching inquiries after their wives and families.

Nor can Tynan be shown to be particularly extraordinary as a US bourgeóis politician: his rivals in the film begin by apposing him, but one by one fall to flattering him as his campaign gatters momentum.

Uncritical

Indeed the film fails to take any critical position on this set up. Alda appears to start from the view that corruption is acceptable so long as it is combined with a winning streak of liberalism and with upholding the traditional bourgeois values of the family.

The naivete of the film and its main character is also remarkable. Would someone like Tynan be unaware of the corruption of John F. Kennedy -the "liberal" Democrat who brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missiles crisis?

Yet Alda has Tynan solemnly telling his woman friend that her "compassion" reminds him of Kennedy! Such cynicism may go down well at Democratic party gatherings but it seems a bit far-fetched to extend it to the bedroom.

One nther sign of naivete is ISE in the lament by one old Senator who warns Tynan that "after a while you forget what you came here for."

In reality • of course US bourgeois politicians are anything but starry-eyed idealists. They are dedicated to no cause other than lining their own pockets and those of the capital. ist class as a whole.

It is hard to imagine a political system more shaped by such material considerations.

Former CIA director George Bush, for example, in his unsuccessful challenge to Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, lashed out over $1

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OCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 28 May