[Contains much political commentary, like James23's review, but done completely independently.]

The United States’ Presidential election of 2000, with its month long uncertainty about the outcome in Florida, was universally called a “constitutional crisis”. It was called a constitutional crisis by the domestic media, by politicians of all parties, and even by foreign commentators. It was not a constitutional crisis. Why? Because there was never any doubt that politicians and the courts would determine the results openly, however messily, through their interpretations of the national and state constitutions. And that eventually, in fact rather quickly, the American people would accept the results.

In a real constitutional crisis, everyone who cared would have been asking about the political loyalties of the officers commanding important units of the United States military stationed in the continental United States. Units such as the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, the Marine Corps expeditionary brigades at Camp Lejune and Camp Pendelton, the regular Army divisions stationed across the United States from Fort Drum, New York to Fort Lewis, Washington, and especially those Army and Air Force units stationed near Washington D. C.

But this is the United States of America, not France, not Argentina, not China, and not any country you can name in Africa, the Moslem Middle East, or most of the former Soviet Union. So nobody here or overseas even once thought to ask about those loyalties. Which is to the Constitution of the United States of America, and not to any political party or politician.

I thought about this at the time and discussed it with my wife. We discussed it again recently after watching Seven Days in May on a rented video. The premise of the movie, released in 1964, directed by John Frankenheimer, script by Rod Serling, and staring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredrick March, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam and Edmond O'Brien is that a real constitutional crisis does exist. That the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Mattoon Scott, played by Lancaster, supported by most of the Chiefs of Staff, several important field commanders, and some important politicians, is plotting to lead a coup against the deeply unpopular President of the United States, Jordan Lyman, played by Fredrick March.

The possible existence of the plot is revealed to the President by Kirk Douglas’ character, Marine Colonel Martin Casey, Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Casey is shown to be a great admirer of General Scott, at least up to the point where he puts together a sequence of individually inconsequential events into something that taken together may be much more serious. But by the time the President and his closest advisors are warned, they have less than a week to block the coup without destroying the confidence of the people of the United States - and the rest of the world - in the constitutional stability of the United States.

The President and his advisors succeed of course, as anyone who has seen the movie or read the book by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey it is based on knows. But it is a close call, primarily because of the charismatic nature of the Scott character played by Lancaster, in possibly his best movie role ever. Watching the movie, it is easy to imagine this dramatically beautiful man, an extremely popular war hero, a dynamic speaker, and both a natural politician and natural leader, pulling the angry American people and a disgruntled military together to replace the apparently weak willed President. A President who is pushing a high risk foreign policy objective against the advice of every leader in the military.

Seven Days in May, Serling’s only movie writing effort, manages to capture, by fast cuts, minimalist acting, and remarkably good dialogue – often taken directly from the book, the full drama of the events as they unfold. Events which take principal characters from elegant parties in Washington, to the almost empty desert near El Paso, Texas, to New York City, to a short but dramatic meeting on an aircraft carrier in harbor at Gibraltar, and back to the White House and the Pentagon.

Each time the good guys seem to have the hard evidence required to force the retirement of the Scott and the other officers planning treason, without revealing that treason to the world, the evidence is lost or snatched away in fully realistic reversals of fortune. In a dramatic final meeting between General and President, Lyman’s deep personal strengths and fierce loyalty to his office and the constitution, plus all the circumstantial evidence his aids have gathered, are shown not to be enough to stop Scott.

Only at the very last minute is the needed hard evidence in hand, delivered from a foreshadowed, but unforeseen source. At the end, the viewer almost feels sorry for General Scott, who has the full courage of his convictions, but is completely abandoned by the high-ranking men in the military and in politics he thought were as dedicated as he was to his praetorian goal.

On the other hand, the viewer is left feeling a great deal of respect for the strengths of President Lyman, and for the democratic and constitutional government he is protecting. Although Lyman’s political party membership is deliberately avoided in the movie, in the book he is a Democrat. His impassioned defense of a strict interpretation of constitutional government delivered to Scott at their final meeting is moving. And, it is something it is hard to believe could come out of the mouth of any senior member of the Democratic Party today.

In another flash forward to “almost” current events, I couldn’t help but compare Lyman’s complete repudiation on constitutional grounds of General Scott’s insolent demand that he step aside voluntarily because of low popularity as revealed by a poll, with the demands by certain Democratic partisans of last November arguing that Bush should hand the Presidency over to Gore because he had lost the popular vote despite winning the vote in the Electoral College.

Interestingly, for the movie Serling reorganized the presentation of major events in the book while remaining fully faithful to the book itself. Drop some minor characters here, do a of bit of character simplification there, collapse multiple scenes from the book into single scenes in the movie, and move the final outcome from the next to last chapter to the very last moment, and his work is done. A magnificent effort.

Rent the movie or read the book. Or do both. And the next time some liberal you can’t avoid talks about the “constitutional crisis” of November 2000, ignore them and thank God you are a citizen of the United States of America.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS