My Top Four Favorite Moments from "The Contender"

1) President Jackson Evans use of food as a political weapon throughout the film. President Lyndon Johnson (1963-1968) did the same thing as president, and President Evans is definitely a savvy president in the mold of LBJ. It is nice to see a president modeled after LBJ be portrayed in a positive light in film!

2) Sam Elliott as Chief of Staff Kermit Newman. Sam Elliott nails it in his performance of the brilliant, cunning Chief of Staff. Typically, the Chief of Staffs for U.S. presidents have been brilliant operators and political masterminds like Kermit (Think of H.R. Haldeman for Richard Nixon, James Baker for Ronald Reagan, Erskine Bowles for Bill Clinton, and Andy Card for George W. Bush). It is nice to see White House Chief of Staffs get their just dessert on film!!

3)When President Evans tells Governor Governor Jack Hathaway "You're the future of the Democratic Party...and you always will be." I have heard some political kiss of death lines in my time, and this moment is right down that alley of dark politics! Governor Hathaway's wife is also a piece of work. She personifies the overly ambitious political operators and climbers that you will always find in the sewer of American politics.

4) Any scene with Gary Oldman as Rep. Sheldon Runyon. Shelly Runyon is your typical conservative Republican bastard depicted on film...but he is also one heck of a poker player and a savvy political operator. He reminds me of many of the smart Republicans who ran the Congress in the 1990s after the 1994 Gingrich Revolution. Hollywood needs conservative Republicans to be the bad guys in films, much like the Brothers Grimm needed ogre characters in their tales. In reality, however, my experience from working on Capitol Hill has instructed me that there are good people (and bad people) in Congress in both parties. And one person's political hero is always someone else's political goat (and vice-versa).

One of my least favorite characters in the film is Senator Laine Hanson. I seriously doubt that an avowed atheist would ever be nominated to the vice-presidency nor would be confirmed by the Congress. I find that truly hard to believe. Perhaps I am biased because I am a strong Catholic who teaches at a Jesuit University. But I do think that Hollywood's anti-religion bias came out a little too strong in the plausibility of an atheist being second-in-line for the presidency of the United States.