The Manhattan Candidate

In Richard Condon’s 1959 political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, the son of a prominent political family is brainwashed by the Communists into being a secret assassin to further their massive conspiracy.

The 1962 movie, with Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, and Angela Lansbury in the lead roles, played right into America’s fevered anti-Communist Zeitgeist. Then, the Communists were atheists intent on dominating the world. American foreign policy was designed to use anti-Communist fears and propaganda to promote America’s military-industrial complex.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Democrats often tried to portray themselves as more hawkishly anti-Communist than their Republican counterparts so as to avoid being characterized as “soft on Communism.” The harsh rhetoric was triggered by right-wingers in both parties, and anyone in American political life who favored talk over bullets was deemed an anti-American pansy. In short, a blustering macho approach to foreign policy was essential to surviving in our political arenas.

In the decades since the book and the movie came out, America went through its own social, political, and cultural sea-changes. The civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements produced an array of ideological shifts that fundamentally altered our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. But certain things remained the same.