![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He had a fine, lurid time with the gay subplot while shifting the philosophical center of gravity back toward the center, casting paragon Henry Fonda as the once idealistic, now repentant lefty secretary-designate. The sheer intrigue and storytelling of Advise and Consent survive the ideological intentions and also made for a wonderfully pulpy movie by Otto Preminger. More likely, it’s that I was riveted like the rest of the country by an author who knew of what he wrote after two decades as a reporter on Capitol Hill, and whose melodrama, gleaned entirely from congressional machinations, feels authentic with the turn of every page. When I first read it at age thirteen, this revisionism escaped me, maybe because I was raised in a home that worshipped Barry Goldwater, so the urgent anti-Communism seemed almost perfunctory. ![]() In the novel, of course, it’s a left-wing senator who drives a decent rising young political star to a similar end for similar reasons. Shots are fired in Consent as well, albeit by a single senator to his own head, a narrative twist based on a real-life incident in the early ’50s involving a Democratic senator from Wyoming, who was pushed to commit suicide over his son’s homosexuality by associates of Joseph McCarthy. ![]()
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