One of the blessings, as well as the curses, of constitutional democracy is we keep on having to hold campaigns and elections.

The 2022 midterm elections are over. City elections in many communities will take place this April. And, ready or not, the 2024 presidential election is soon to enter what political analysts call “the invisible primary.”

Most of us are not planning to campaign for any office in 2023 or 2024. Yet, across Colorado and the United States, candidates and campaign staffers are preparing for forthcoming elections.

Would-be candidates have no spring training camp or Kaplan prep tutoring program to attend. Campaigning for public office is typically a do-it-yourself job with lots of on-the-job training and improvisation. The best way to prepare for campaigning is to have worked in someone else’s earlier campaign.

Another way is to binge on classic Hollywood campaign and election movies. It also helps to retrieve appropriate documentaries that have captured the essence of campaigning over the past several decades.

Here is a guide to a few of these instructive and, in many cases, entertaining movies. Hollywood films first:

The Last Hurrah (1958)

Based on Edwin O’Connor’s prize-winning 1956 novel of the same name, this film was directed and produced by the legendary John Ford and starred famous actor Spencer Tracy.

The film’s title is a reference to fictional Mayor Frank Skeffington’s last and unsuccessful run for mayor of a city like Boston. Skeffington is loosely but accurately based on Boston’s colorful rogue Mayor James Michael Curley, who held a number of political offices in Massachusetts for more than four decades.

This is a film about old-school ethnic and tribal campaigning. Patronage matters. Deals are made. Wards (political sections of the city) are organized. Wakes and funerals are important political events. Monetary kickbacks and graft are involved.

Both the joys and the underbelly of politics get described. Campaigns can be exciting but, as the film makes clear, politics is not for the thin-skinned, the timid, or the overly earnest.

The film is dated and slow-paced in places, yet it is a valuable initiation into the rites and rituals of big-city American politics.

The Best Man (1964)

Based on Gore Vidal’s hit Broadway play, this film is set in the final days of a national nominating convention for president of the United States.

Only a few candidates have survived to this point. It appears to be a showdown between a principled, idealistic secretary of state named William Russell (played by Henry Fonda) and a hard-charging, attractive U.S. senator, Joe Cantwell. The two are fictionalized composites, yet Russell has some of Adlai Stevenson’s characteristics while Cantwell shares some of Richard Nixon’s attributes.

Both candidates seek the endorsement of their political party’s incumbent president. But both candidates have a past. Russell has been a womanizer and has had a nervous breakdown. There is a rumor that the what-ever-it-takes-to-win Cantwell may have had a brief homosexual affair during military service.

The incumbent president wants to back a winning candidate, yet he has doubts about both leading contenders. The old president worries that Russell might be lacking in the backbone and political dexterity the job demands. But then the old president fears that Cantwell may be too ruthless.

It is a surprise when an exceptionally bland governor, Merwin, gets the nod and nomination. Viewers are left wondering if the “best man” got tossed aside amidst the frenzied last days of this exhilarating yet exhausting political convention. As the film ends, the convention delegates are chanting “Mer-Win, Mer-Win.”

This is a cynical, invaluable and timeless political movie.

The Candidate (1972)

This Hollywood classic stars Robert Redford as a handsome, idealistic and environmental lawyer running for the U.S. Senate in California. Young Bill McKay is the son of a former governor, yet he dislikes politics and all the platitudes and phoniness he associates with that profession.

Enterprising campaign consultants talk McKay into running against a longtime entrenched conservative incumbent. They persuade McKay that, though he will probably lose, this will be a good way to promote his “green” agenda. Meanwhile, the consultants know they can make lots of money managing the campaign of this novice and malleable candidate.

McKay allows himself to be groomed and packaged by his handlers. The attention of being in the spotlight mesmerizes McKay and flatters his ego. His handlers reshape him into being more centrist than he actually is.

Somewhere in the process our handsome knight becomes a “politician.” The film suggests candidates and their campaign managers will do a lot of trimming to triumph in an election.

Redford gives a first-rate performance. The movie is highly simplified – young good guy vs. old reactionary bad guy. We get no information on who is funding these campaigns. Films do a poor job of explaining campaign finance.

Yet the political lessons here are many. The young good guy wins, but at that point he is not certain what the race was really about. In a famous movie last line, McKay asks his campaign manager, “What do we do now?”

Primary Colors (1998)

Award-winning journalist Joe Klein wrote a fictional account of Bill Clinton’s 1991-92 campaign for the 1992 Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It was made into a movie.

Clinton was an underdog but he had been governor of Arkansas for eleven years. He was an honors graduate of Georgetown University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He later graduated from Yale Law School.

Governor Jack Stanton is Klein’s fictional candidate. We watch him campaign in the New Hampshire presidential primary and in the Florida primary. He is bright and charming yet has considerable “political baggage.” Stanton is accused, like Clinton was, of having extra-marital sexual affairs and avoiding the military draft during the Vietnam War.

The value of this film is its close look at campaign operations, campaign debates, radio and television interviews and especially the interaction of campaign advisors with candidates. Jack Stanton appears to thrive on chaos yet somehow becomes a likeable rogue as he wrestles with policy issues, rival candidates, the media and the paradoxical life he has led.

Joe Klein had to imagine what happened behind closed doors, yet what he discusses seems mostly believable.

Actor John Travolta does a superb job of playing a Clinton lookalike. Actress Emma Thompson is equally convincing as an exasperated yet complicit political wife.

The movie captures the glory and the sleaze of modern political life. College students who watched this film with us were appalled by candidate Stanton yet admitted they probably would have voted for him, flaws and all.

The real candidate, Bill Clinton, caught many breaks in the 1992 presidential election campaign. His wife stood by him, and popular New York Governor Mario Cuomo decided not to run. In the general election, independent candidate Ross Perot, a billionaire, decided to run as a fiscal conservative. That meant there were essentially two Republicans running against Clinton in a three-way race. Despite his flaws, Clinton easily won the White House.

Ever since the 1950s, documentary filmmakers have covered presidential elections. Here are a few worthy of attention:

Primary 1960 (1961)

U.S. Sens. John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey campaign against each other in the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary. This is almost like a family home made video – yet it s useful.

The Making of the President 1960 (1963)

Portrays the extremely hard-fought and close race for president in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon.

War Room (1993)

A clever documentary account of Bill Clinton’s senior campaign advisors and how they plotted their victorious strategies in the 1992 presidential election. Colorful strategist James Carville is featured along with communications director George Stephanopoulos. Both of them became popular television news commentators in subsequent years.

Mitt (2014)

This is a Mitt Romney-friendly documentary showcasing the former Massachusetts governor and current Utah U.S. senator and his family. It reveals Romney’s decision making in both his 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns (both unsuccessful). Romney and his father, a popular governor of Michigan in the 1960s, have been prominent traditional Republicans over the past 60 years.

Mayor Pete (2021)

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg ran as an improbable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. He ran against two billionaires and several well-known millionaires, and he came in first in the Iowa caucuses and second in the New Hampshire primary.

This is a pro-Pete Buttigieg film and shows why he captured a respectable following and a cabinet position (transportation) in the Joe Biden presidential administration.

Both this and the Romney documentary are instructive.

You will probably confirm that you are not running for any office after you watch these films. But you probably will respect those who have the courage to run. At least you will understand the enormously challenging obstacle course we force electoral candidates to endure.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy write about Colorado and national politics.