Posted on 10/20/2012 4:29:19 AM PDT by billorites
One of my favorite movies of all time is Frank Capra's “It's A Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart. In the film, Stewart's character, a despondent and near suicidal George Bailey, who runs a small savings and loan in the town of Bedford Falls, is given a gift: the chance to see what his town would be like if he'd never been born — if he'd never extended a helping hand to his neighbors when they needed it most, never helped his community understand how much they depended upon one another.
In this alternative vision, the town's plutocratic banker, Mr. Potter — without the decent George Bailey to counter him — rules everything. A bottom-line-is-everything, every-man-for-himself mentality runs unchecked, resulting in Bedford Falls' metamorphosis into “Pottersville,” an amoral, soulless place.
The movie has a happy ending, thank goodness, but its themes endure to this day and echo in the current presidential election, which at its core asks the question: What kind of country are we? Are we Bedford Falls or Pottersville? Are we all in this together — and stronger and better because of it — or are we entirely on our own, with a few “makers” on the top of a heap of “takers?”
I'm supporting President Barack Obama because there is no question about his answer to that question. Having observed Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and then watching him in the Republican primaries as he tacked this way and that whenever it suited him (but mostly to the far right, the Tea Party radicals, even the birthers), I can't be sure of him.
As a student of American history, let me give some perspective. Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt (one of the subjects of a new documentary series we are working on — if Romney doesn't get his way and PBS isn't eliminated), President Obama took office at a time when lax regulation of the financial industry had brought us to the brink of a complete collapse, creating an industry that needed nearly a trillion dollars in President Bush-authorized bailouts. He also inherited two off-the-books wars that had further ballooned our budget deficit, an auto industry on the verge of bankruptcy, and a loss of prestige in the international community.
Like FDR, Obama has walked us back from the brink. He averted a depression, ended one war and put us on the path ending the other, rescued the auto industry, slowly building the sound footing necessary to have a sustained recovery — better, smarter regulation of those that brought this upon us, tax breaks to save a dwindling middle class, and a request that the very super rich, folks like Gov. Romney who have taken advantage of loopholes and deductions and off-shore accounts to amass their fortunes, pay their fair share. (Like FDR's hero, Theodore Roosevelt — also part of the new series we're making — Obama has deployed the shrewd combination of speaking softly and using a big stick. Ask Bin Laden.)
There's a lot more work to be done, obviously, but history itself suggests that changing the trajectory of things takes time and patience and, as FDR demonstrated, intelligent experimentation. (All Mitt Romney seems to offer is a return to the very policies that got us into this mess in the first place.)
Unfortunately, unlike FDR, who had great cooperation from across the aisle for many of his programs, Obama has had to pretty much go it alone. As the Republican Party ignored his gestures of compromise and bipartisanship, they also moved further and further to the right, the furthest right they have ever been since the party was founded in 1856. Further right than the days of President Ronald Reagan, who in his second inaugural address in 1985 said, “Our two-party system has served us well over the years, but never better than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united in a common cause.”
How different, that attitude, from the Republican position of the last three years, which has taken the very process that forged our Constitution and created this great country — compromise — and tried to turn it into a dirty word.
More than a student of American history, I am also the father of four daughters. They mean the world to me, of course, and I've tried to teach them those timeless American values “It's A Wonderful Life” promotes: a small-town hard-work ethic, holding to your inner principles and not changing with the first breeze of opposition, never lying, and loving both the country and its potentiality. And they constantly point me to the future, to the essential question George Bailey faced: What can one person do to make their community a Bedford Falls instead of a Pottersville? Well, there are many things. But one of them, I think, is to vote for Barack Obama.
Ken Burns, a filmmaker from Walpole, is director of “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “The Dust Bowl” and many other documentaries.
Dear Mr. Burns, Obama passed everything he wanted with a majority of democrats in both houses.
Half the American people refuse to go the communist route with your Dear leader.
Big Burns!!!
Burns is big on fantasies. He bought into the positive fabrications of Obie’s bio, while simultaneously believing the smears of Romney
You need a dose of reality, Mr Burns.
When you look just a little closer, the comparison breaks down completely. One key element of this is the lack of many things we now associate with "Big Government" -- or even any government at all -- in It's a Wonderful Life. By my count, the only government institutions that got any play at all in that movie were the U.S. military and the local police. George Bailey didn't even have a mail carrier employed by the U.S. Postal Service among his customer/friends. And even the buses were run by private companies back then!
George Bailey's approach to helping his fellow citizens has slowly disappeared from the American scene since the 1940s. When his customers are facing financial difficulties, he doesn't give them applications for food stamps, doesn't tell them how to sign up for free school lunches, and doesn't send them off to collect Social Security Disability benefits. He reaches into his own pocket and uses his own money to help them.
To take this one step further, just consider the one character of the movie who represents a complete disconnect between that era and modern, secular America: Clarence Oddbody, the guardian angel who is sent down from heaven to save George Bailey. He doesn't bring George the one thing that can help George out of the quandary that has driven him to despair (the $8,000 that has been misplaced from the bank's accounts). In fact, Clarence makes it clear that they have no use for money in heaven -- something we would do well to consider today in this age of underwater mortgages, trillion-dollar Federal deficits, and a nation sliding into disorder, decadance and despair.
Burns: “..if Romney doesn’t get his way and PBS isn’t eliminated.”
If only.
The one upside of the Obama reign of terror has been the unmasking of complete morons like this.
What an idiot!
Ken Burns, you go ahead and vote for Ken Burns, you secularist ignorant-on-morality useless man...we know what you’re really voting for. You use God, but you despise Him. And you’re no student of history, you liar. You’re a student of atheistic socialism and revisionist history. You have failed your daughters.
Another celeb learning how to lose future audiences...
Very good post
He’s fighting for his stupid documemtaries no one watches
His “favorite part” of the panel discussion after his CivilWar series was when an African American female prof asked whether we could truly say teh Civil War was over when some Americans lived in mansions and some Americans were homeless. He was an idiot from the beginning.
Speaking softly? More like um, ah and uh.
Obunga is usually talking out of his ass, something that Burns is capable of too.
Nationalized Public Broadcasting has been very good to Ken so of course he is voting for more cheese.
Pray for America
Personally, I find it hard to believe that a leftist like Ken Burns would have such an attachment to a movie in which the only black character was the Bailey family's domestic help.
The world will be a better place when the leftist Ken Burns is history.
This should be tagged with a mega-barf alert
The world will be a better place when the leftist Ken Burns is history.
Financial Fraud Conviction Scorecard:
Bush: 1300+, Clinton: 1000+, Obama: 0.0
Emotional George Bailey and his drunk uncle equal Obama and Biden? I’ll buy that. It’s just a movie. As far as who would make the best President.... Burns would have left the best guy for the job on the cutting room floor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.