Swing Vote presents us with a vicious political farce so biting and on-the-mark that it should shame the election that looms over us like a summer monsoon. Because the film doesn’t implode on its own satire goes to its credit. 
In America every vote counts. Well, not really. Only the votes we want to count actually do — isn’t that what Florida taught us? But what if one man and his one vote were to decide who was president? It's unlikely, but that’s what Swing Vote presents us with, although it muddies the water by making the man a buffoon, a ridiculous redneck with a double-wide, a Ford truck and empty beer cans piled high in his sink — the living, breathing, stinking soul of a Toby Keith song. True to hillbilly form, when authorities arrive at his trailer he assumes they're Child Protective Services and answers the door clutching his bible.The man is Bud Johnson, a single parent who works as an egg inspector at a chicken ranch. He lives in Texico, New Mexico — “That can’t be a real place,” someone says — where Mexican workers are being “in-sourced” to take his job. His wife left him years ago to pursue a singing career in Albuquerque, which is the equivalent of hunting elephant in Iceland. He’s rough around the edges with “no higher education and not much lower education either.” When someone asks him if he supports a pro-life stance all he can muster is some idiot response — “Well, I support life, it’s a great thing … life,” — unknowing that abortion is the issue at hand.
Bud Johnson, who’s surgically attached to a Bass Pro Shop hat and sunglasses, is played by Kevin Costner, an American everyman playing the American everyman. Costner plays Bud as if he were the butt of all those Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes, or at least 90 percent of them. One night he goes to vote, gets drunk and passes out. His young daughter, Molly (Madeline Carroll), is ashamed her father is too much of an idiot to vote so she sneaks past the election workers to cast his vote for him. The ballot jams in the machine — no word on the chads, hanging or otherwise — and it leaves New Mexico’s electoral votes dangling over two presidential candidates in a dead heat. 
With 10 days until he can recast his vote, Bud’s descended on by the two candidates, their political strategists and the media, which builds bleachers in front of the family trailer, just on the other side of the Trans-Am on cinder blocks. The republicans woo him like only the republicans know how — with NASCAR and Richard Petty, who is second only to an appearance by the Almighty himself. Gun lobbyists send him a chocolate uzi. The democrats drag in Willie Nelson, who Bud idolizes, and they talk fishing. The Republican candidate and current president is played by Kelsey Grammer as a slightly less-dense version of Dubya. The Democrat candidate is played by Dennis Hopper, who plays a wise yet misguided politician riding a “truth train” into Bud’s life. Each has campaign managers (Nathan Lane and Stanley Tucci) who devise crazy plans to win Bud’s vote: The Democrat vows to make abortion illegal, and the Republican creates a new nature preserve around Bud’s fishing river. At one point the president opens up Air Force One for Texico’s newest celebrity and all Bud can do is sniff the leather in the seats.
The movie is a sharp indictment on the way Americans think, the way we reason and the way we assign fame to people who clearly don’t deserve it. Politicians, so eager to please and make impossible promises, are also an easy target. Watch how the Hopper character, the Democrat, fights the pro-life commercial that features children exploding on a playground — “This doesn’t feel right,” he says as he sells his soul to Bud. Grammer has a scene where his president is clearly at a loss for what’s become of him. The political game has drained him of his morals. 
The media, personified by an excellent performance by Paula Patton, is fair game as well. She plays an enterprising reporter who faces an ethical dilemma with Bud’s daughter. Patton, beautiful and charming, could have been a romantic interest, but Swing Vote wisely sticks to its agenda and doesn’t mix romantic comedy into its satire. Special attention is given, though, to Molly, who is the most intelligent character in the film. She has a scene during a school presentation that is absolutely heartbreaking — “My dad wants the best for us, all of us,” she says with big tears rolling down her cheeks. 
Swing Vote works so brilliantly because it makes no apologies for Bud’s behavior. He is an idiot and he knows it. Maybe we all are when it comes to politics, but if we ask the right questions we can begin to save ourselves from our own fates. The movie, which could be a kindred spirit to Rob Reiner’s American President, inspires hope in the political process; not so much hope with the candidates, but hope with ourselves, the voters. The movie does not side with either party and if anyone tells you so they weren’t paying the slightest bit of attention. It’s incredibly neutral, so much so that the ending might leave you unfulfilled. But it’s the right ending for the movie. And this is the right movie for this country amid Barack Obama's and John McCain’s march toward November. We need a little inspiration to help us wade through the coming storm and Swing Vote provides it. Mostly it provides hope in the political process, and that’s something it desperately needs.
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