The Distinguished Gentleman Essay

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The Political Process

In a political setting, people transfer their individual political power to their representatives to form sovereignty. The representatives then constitute a government at the helms of affairs, using the state instruments to control the political system in society. There are procedures involved in the power transfer, and each stage of this is known as a political process. However, there are different schools of thoughts on what constitutes a proper political process. Individual elector, politicians, and sometimes, political parties form their political ideologies based on the perspective that best suits their narrative of the right political process. From different countries, political parties, and leaders, we have witnessed different political processes, and one movie that perfectly depicts the public’s opinion of a political process is the 1992 American political comedy movie, The Distinguished Gentleman.

Written by Martin Kaplan and Jonathan Reynolds, and directed by Jonathan Lynn. The film starred, among others, the famous American comedian, Eddie Murphy, who played the character, Thomas Jefferson Johnson, a con man from Florida who got into the political scene with a criminal mindset, and rode on the popularity of a dead former congressman with the same name, Jeff Johnson. Thomas Jefferson capitalized on the voters’ naiveté to get votes. His campaign lacked substance, as the core basis of his movement was the slogan “The name you know.” Nevertheless, he still got massive support from the people, won the election, and soon made his way to Washington D.C. With his criminal mindset, Johnson, a member of the most powerful committee in the Congress, the Committee on Power, realized he could sell his votes as a congressman. Johnson continued in his conman attitude in the chamber full of many other corrupt congressmen like himself and engaged in several shading deals. Although Johnson had a change of heart along the line, however, the movies’ public view of the political process can be drawn from the plots and the storyline of the movie.

Firstly, the campaign which was the foremost step of political procedures, in the movie was built on a very faulty viewpoint.

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Johnson all through the campaigns did not grant any interview or press conference, to hide his identity. He was smart enough to completely keep his constituents in the dark as regards his true identity. In addition to that, the self-acclaimed gentleman was lacking in terms of quality of his campaigns. Instead of telling people what he would do if elected, Johnson was all about the name, playing on people’s intelligence. In other words, he failed to tell his intending constituents about his past, his achievements, and his plans if elected.

Secondly, the election further showed the lapses of the voters. Despite all his shortcomings in the campaigns, Johnson still got a massive vote to win the election, which suggests that his conman approach was effective enough to beat the collectivity of the majority’s sense of reasoning. The electors failed to ask questions and run a background check on their representative. So, from the attitudes of the electors and the mindset of the congressmen Johnson, it can be deduced that the movie, The Distinguished Gentleman, came from an erroneous philosophy of political process being a means to induce and hypnotize the electors to fulfill personal ambition.

Personally, I have a totally different perspective of a political process, which in all forms, contrasts the one represented in the film. To begin with, I strongly believe that the political process does not start and end with the electioneering process. Just as posited by United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP), a political process should be inclusive as that is crucial to peace sustainability, help to prevent conflict, and contribute to resolving structural inequities and other causes of conflict. Campaigns, voting, and other activities that lead to choosing political leaders are just a part of the political process. The right approach to a political process should start from profiling the candidate who has come out to run for a public office. The fact-checking should be thoroughly done to ascertain the credibility of the candidate, and this includes….....

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