Is A Perfect Candidate, the documentary of Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North‘s 1994 near-miss challenge to Virginia Senator Chuck Robb.
Robb comes across as a bumbler, North as sharp and so compelling that the Washington Post’s Richmond bureau chief, Don Baker, all but admits to having voted for him. The real star of the movie, though, is Mark Goodin, the GOP operative running North’s campaign, which is brutally negative and dwells on Robb’s cocaine and bimbo problems. Goodin cuts just one corny positive ad.
Now we’re not going to speculate about what this tells us about Sheekey, the man at the heart of the mayor’s reelection campaign, other than that he’s a lover of politics. See the movie yourself.
But there are some great tidbits, including:
-A Goodin monologue on the difference between governing and campaigning. Governing, you build coalitions. Campaigning, you take the rock, chip off your piece of it, and then try to smash the rest to smithereens so small nobody can put it back together.
-A Bill Harris cameo.
-Goodin, stalking out after North’s concession speech, and muttering about how “I’ll never do that again.” Never do what again? asks the cameraman. He’ll never, for one minute, let up on the negative advertising.
