"The convention could do worse...and probably will."
--Thomas Brackett Reed, Speaker of the House (1889-91, 1895-99)
Watching The Dark Horse (1932, directed by Alfred E. Green) is bound to give anyone who follows politics a case of deja vu. The players may change, the issues may change, but the process of politics, it seems, is constant. You could remake this film point for point, not changing anything, and it would feel completely contemporary. It certainly seems prescient in the wake of decades of politicians whose only qualifications are that they seem just like average Joes: the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with, as a recent American head of state was oft described. This movie has a cynical view of politics that's positively Swiftian. Like the rulers of Laputa in Gulliver's Travels, the politicians in The Dark Horse are controlled by "flappers," who decide when they will speak and what they will say because they have no brains of their own.
The story here finds the Progressive Party Convention deadlocked. Neither of the candidates for Governor can win the convention, so one campaign conceives of a spoiler, a "dark horse," to break the logjam. If their dark horse can siphon off just a smidge of the other candidate's support, their guy wins. Only the other side foxes them, and the dark horse wins the nomination. The dark horse in question is one Zachary Hicks, a simple man in more than one meaning of the word. The party muckety mucks turn to ace campaign manager Hal Samson Blake at the urging of Kay Russell, their secretary. She knows that Blake can get anyone elected, even a turnip like Hicks. And lo and behold, he's successful. He manages Hicks to play up the fact that he's just as dumb as everyone else, that the voters are choosing someone who is on their level. Meanwhile, Blake has his own problems. He wants to marry Kay, but he also has to deal with his vengeful ex-wife, Maybelle. Maybelle, herself, has been co-opted by the opposition in a scheme to disgrace Hicks, but she winds up fouling Blake's relationship with Kay instead.