In the cinematic cultural touchstone, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” there is a key scene when, upon the death of George Bailey’s father and the founder of the Bailey Building And Loan, the thrift’s board of directors is deciding its fate in the months after the elder Bailey’s passing. Evil Mr. Potter, the greedy and misanthropic owner of the local bank, played so menacingly by Lionel Barrymore, moved to liquidate the concern, leaving his bank to reap the benefits. He derided the late Peter Bailey as a “starry-eyed dreamer,” filling people’s heads “with a lot of impossible ideas.” Rising in his father’s defense, young George made possibly one of moviedom’s best and most succinct declarations of the values of the common man, the “people who do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community,” people who deserve to live in decency while they do.
His impassioned plea for the building and loan concluded with, “This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have someplace where people can come without crawling to Potter!”
Henry F. Potter. The angry, distant, rich man who rides in a black limousine through a city he mostly owns, bestowing favors upon those he must control (he even tried to buy off George with a job offer that paid seven times what he made on his own), and regarding the rest as “rabble.” Most people silently feared him, I would imagine, whether friend or foe. But the hamlet of Bedford Falls had one ray of hopeful light: the young George Bailey and his father’s one-horse institution. David to Potter’s Goliath.
The same role is played today by Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley as she alone remains to face GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. And now, just like Old Man Potter, Trump is raving for her to bow to his wants and needs. It’s time for her to shut down her penny ante operation and succumb to the inevitable.
But is that what America – Bedford Falls writ large – wants or needs? Being even more specific, is that what conservative America wants and needs? In Iowa, land of the most conservative of conservatives, no less than 49% of them braved zero degree weather to show up in person to caucus for someone other than Donald Trump. What will that look like among conservatives in the purple and even blue states? Nikki Haley’s presence on primary ballots gives not only the never-trumpers but also the other-than-trumpers a way to express, amongst themselves and to the rest of the nation, that they recognize the dangers inherent in nominating a candidate who says the quiet parts out loud, who paraphrases Mein Kampf and demands public denigration of his vanquished foes. Who else cringed at the utter humiliation of former candidate Tim Scott, reduced to a grinning parody of himself in Trump’s stage scenery while being subjected to having his personal life trivialized, to which he responded with a groveling profession of love for his tormentor?
Just as the Bailey Building And Loan gave the non-elite members of its community an alternative to the usury of Potter’s banks and the squalid conditions of his slum-like properties, primary voters need a campaign they can get behind just to say, we want something else.
People have to crawl to Trump the same way people had to crawl to Mr. Potter. George Bailey called him variously a warped, frustrated old man, and a scurvy spider, weaving webs to trap good people. Yes, there was a price to be paid for standing up for himself and others. In order to stay and run the business, George cancelled his dream trip to Europe, he stayed home from college, even using the money he had saved for his own education to send his younger brother to college instead. His honeymoon stash covered a run on the banks.
Nikki Haley will pay a price, too. Trump’s built-in supporters, always successfully duped into believing his third-grade name-calling is legitimate political discourse, will speak of her derisively. And as long as Trumpism is what passes for a platform in the Republican party, she will be banished from the flock, cast out and kept away from the levers of power within the cabal.
However, the reward for George Bailey, the movie made perfectly clear, was that he quietly bettered the lives of hundreds of people, good ordinary people. The kind of people whose work and faith and dignity today allow America to forge ahead, to function on a day-to-day basis, and to hope to leave something better for our children. George Bailey offered such people his trust, dignity, community, a home, family. In short, the American Dream.
Can Nikki Haley actually win the general election? Would she be a good president? Who knows. That’s immaterial at this point. Right now, it is Nikki Haley’s moment to decide whether to bow out in trade for a seat at the table to kiss the ring with the other dons, or keep up the good fight, and give voice to those who desperately wish to be unbowed by the bullies. Those who want to live without having to crawl to Old Man Potter.
All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Band 