This year marks the 60th anniversary of perhaps the greatest political film of all time, 1964’s The Best Man. Based on a play of the same name by Gore Vidal, who also wrote the screenplay, The Best Man tells the story of a deadlocked political convention at which two candidates vie for their party’s presidential nomination. Sixty years on, the film remains tremendously entertaining: clever, suspenseful, with an exceptional cast. The dialogue is outstanding. Considering what we have witnessed in the current presidential campaign—and it’s only August—Americans might again find interest in Vidals depiction of the backroom intrigue that determines a nomination.

　　The Best Man holds up for its mordant but profound observations about American democracy. There’s not much idealism here. The film’s most principled character has flaws that make him unfit to lead and the ultimate nominee is a “nobody” whose lack of record is his best quality. But there are important lessons about the sort of person who seeks high office in a democracy—and the sort of person high office requires. Perhaps surprisingly, given that Vidal was a man of the Left and had a rather acid personality, The Best Man offers a basically fair, even forgiving, depiction of progressives and conservatives. Neither are wholly good nor wholly bad, just human.

　　The film is a fictionalized version of the 1964 convention of a thinly disguised Democratic Party. This is the era before binding primaries, when party conventions chose presidential candidates instead of crowning them. The two main rivals are former Secretary of State William Russell (Henry Fonda) and Senator Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson). Both desperately seek the endorsement of former President Art Hockstader (Lee Tracy, who steals every scene he’s in), which will put one or the other over the top. These three politicians—Russell, Cantwell, and Hockstader—form a triangle around which the film’s plot unfolds.

　　Russell is a liberal intellectual who supports integration and the Civil Rights Act. The “best man” to whom the films title refers, he is rich, bright, and urbane, the sort of person who tosses off quotes from Betrand Russell and Oliver Cromwell. He has political skills, too, including the ability to judge people’s character and decode hidden messages in seemingly banal statements. He has wit and integrity, especially compared to other politicians.

　　But he also has flaws. He is indecisive, apt to hesitate when quick action is necessary. He is pedantic and self-involved. And he doesn’t have as much integrity as he thinks. Outright lying is beneath him, but not misdirection. He parades his wife, Alice, around the convention to suggest a happy marriage, but he is a compulsive womanizer, and his marriage is a fraud. The long-suffering Alice stays with him only because she wants to be first lady. Moreover, he recently had a mental breakdown requiring a long hospitalization. But he declines to disclose that event to the delegates, who surely have a right to know such things about a potential nominee.

　　Cantwell, by contrast, is “the darling of the conservative element of the nation,” a description that would be surprising for a Democratic politician today, but possible in 1964. He condemns racism but opposes the Civil Rights Act on federalism grounds. He is ruthless, humorless, and mediocre, having made his career crusading against a communist conspiracy others dismiss as “imaginary.” He always attacks, even when unnecessary and counterproductive. If Russell is based on Adlai Stevenson, Cantwell is a progressive caricature of Richard Nixon—and a young John Kennedy, whom Vidal knew through Jacqueline Kennedy, to whom Vidal was related by marriage. (Vidal’s original play was set at the 1960 Democratic convention that nominated Kennedy over Stevenson, and Vidal’s portrayal of events reportedly caused a rift between him and the Kennedy family.)

　　You’d expect such a caricature from Vidal. But he surprises. Cantwell has good qualities, too. He has pulled himself out of poverty. He is decisive and fearless. And he’s not a phony. His methods are repulsive, but it’s wrong to say, as Russell does, that Cantwell has no sense of responsibility to anyone or anything. He genuinely believes in America and thinks a communist threat exists—which, of course, it did, as the Venona Papers subsequently revealed. He and his wife make a vulgar pair, but unlike Russell and his wife, they love each other.

　　Former President Art Hockstader is the third corner of the political triangle. On the surface, he’s an old-fashioned pol, a self-deprecating, glad-handing happy warrior. But in private, he’s a sad old man who believes in nothing. In politics as in life, he tells Cantwell, there are no ultimate goals. It’s all a game, a performance that will end in the grave, “where the dust is neither good nor bad.” Hockstader wants one last chance to play kingmaker. He likes and admires Russell, a friend and protégé, but plans to endorse Cantwell. Cantwell is more decisive.

　　Even a well-meaning president will occasionally have to betray his friends, double-cross his supporters, employ underhanded tactics, and make decisions that lead to death and destruction for his country’s citizens.

　　But then Cantwell makes a mistake. Failing to perceive that Hockstader will endorse him, not Russell, he threatens to reveal Russell’s mental breakdown—a revelation that would finish Russell but also embarrass Hockstader. Appalled at Cantwell’s lack of judgment, Hockstader changes his mind and decides to work for Russell. (“It’s not that I object to your being a bastard,” he tells Cantwell, “it’s your being such a stupid bastard that I object to.”) He starts to line up votes for Russell, and Cantwell prepares to release Russell’s medical records.

　　Before Cantwell can do so, though, Russell comes into possession of court martial testimony that suggests that Cantwell had a homosexual affair while in the army. Russell doesn’t believe the story—” You know Joe’s not like that,” he objects—but whether the report is true or false doesn’t matter to Hockstader, who urges Russell to use it to stop Cantwell. When Russell demurs, Hockstader angrily rebukes him, giving him a lesson about what it means to be president:

　　I am here to tell you this. Power is not a toy that we give to good children. It’s a weapon. And the strong man takes it, and he uses it. And if you don’t … beat Joe Cantwell to the floor with this very dirty stick, then you’ve got no business in this big league. Because if you don’t fight, this job is not for you. And it never will be.

　　Rejecting Hockstader’s advice, Russell decides not to use the court martial records. Why is not exactly clear. Cantwell denies the story and claims he has corroborating evidence. His accuser has credibility issues. Maybe Russell thinks the allegations will backfire. Maybe he can’t bring himself to fight dirty. Or maybe, as Hockstader suggests, he’s simply not strong enough.

　　But Russell doesn’t want Cantwell, whom he loathes and distrusts, to become president. So, in a move that surprises everyone, he breaks the convention deadlock by withdrawing his name and instructing his delegates to support a young Western governor named Merwin, about whom no one knows anything. Cantwell loses, the convention enthusiastically nominates Merwin, and Russell tells reporters, in the film’s final line, that he’s “happy that the best man won.”

　　Two interpretations of this ambiguous line exist, both ironic. The first is that Russell, the best man, doesnt have what it takes. Political leadership is about power, as Hockstader says, and requires ugly things. Even a well-meaning president will occasionally have to betray his friends, double-cross his supporters, employ underhanded tactics, and make decisions that lead to death and destruction for his country’s citizens. A person who would scruple at such things couldn’t do the job. When it comes to being president, the best man is not the right man. Russell “wins” by returning to private life where, the film hints, he will patch up his marriage with Alice and find fulfillment.

　　The second is that Merwin, not Russell, is in fact the best man to be president. Merwin is an empty suit, “a man without a face,” but politics is itself empty—fun if you don’t take it seriously, but a game. In politics, the best man, the one most qualified for the job, is precisely the man about whom people know nothing, whose character is a cipher, and whose goals are a question mark. “Men without faces,” Russell remarks, “tend to get elected president. And power or responsibility or personal honor fill in the features, usually pretty well.”

　　The second interpretation is more optimistic than the first, though neither presents American democracy in an especially flattering light. What did you expect from Gore Vidal? But it’s worth keeping the film’s lessons in mind in a presidential election year, especially this one. We hear a lot these days about preserving our democracy, as if some new threat exists, one side is uniquely bad and the other uniquely good, and democracy itself protects us from disaster.

　　None of that is true. Two hundred years ago, the Framers recognized the flaws inherent in human nature and democracy, which is why they adopted a constitution with so many guardrails against ambition and checks against the exercise of power. It’s those guardrails and checks—together with the sense we have had of participating in a common enterprise—that have preserved the American Republic. If that Republic is going to endure, it will be saved by those things again.