GIVEN the failures of political prognostication to explain the 2016 presidential election, it makes a lot of sense that people are looking to popular culture to get a psychological handle on what, exactly, is happening in America right now. From claiming Mike Judge’s Idiocracy as a prophetic document, to looking at how fictional Hillary Clintons handled their straying spouses, to tracing Donald Trump’s careful cultivation of his media image long before his successes with The Apprentice, movies and television showed us what polling numbers and pundits couldn’t always capture.

And while a House of Cards-style contested convention now seems unlikely when Republicans meet in Cleveland, a recent movie about America’s political past aired on HBO offers up a sober thought experiment for the country’s political future.

All the Way, Jay Roach’s adaptation of Robert Schenkkan’s 2012 play, follows Lyndon Baines Johnson (Bryan Cranston, who played the role on Broadway and reprises it here) in 1963 and 1964 as he tries to balance his relationships with Martin Luther King Jr (Anthony Mackie, crowded by the huge cast and sweep of the film) and his mentor in the senate, Richard Russell (Frank Langella) of Georgia. In its portrait of the rift between Russell and Johnson and the regional wings of the Democratic Party, All the Way feels like essential, if often overstuffed, watching.

There are two moments in All the Way that feel particularly prophetic. In the first scene, Russell waits for Johnson to exit the scrum after he signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a moment Johnson has punctuated by presenting King with a pen and making sure that he is photographed giving the civil rights leader a hearty handshake.

“I am old, that’s true. And God knows, I’m tired,” Russell tells his former protégé bitterly. “But the fellows coming up behind me are utterly without principle of any kind. You’ll see how you like dealing with them. You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.” Johnson, convinced he can maintain the relationship, tells Russell, “I still need you, Dick,” and tries to put an arm around the older man. But where King had leaned into a handshake with Johnson, embracing the potential and pitfalls of the relationship, Russell steps away from Johnson’s embrace.

The 2016 campaign suggests that Russell’s warning was horrifyingly prescient. If Trump lacks the conviction of George Wallace’s virulent racism, it’s because he lacks the attention span to stay particularly consistent on any of the horrifying stances he’s staked out thus far in the campaign. And given Trump’s vacillation between isolationism and ideas such as seizing Iraq’s oil, the Johnson campaign’s deployment of the infamous “Daisy” ad against Barry Goldwater almost feels premature.

The further decline of our politics in the past half-century doesn’t mean Johnson shouldn’t have pursued his civil rights bills, of course. But Russell’s warning that our politics can always get uglier and more fractured shouldn’t be taken lightly, either. Johnson managed to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed. But at a certain point, a political system governed only by cunning and self-serving urges could make it impossible to pursue and pass the big, important bills that spark controversy in the first place.

And in the final moments of All the Way, Johnson and Russell speak by phone after Johnson’s victory in the election. The wounds between the two men have healed, but the scar tissue that remains between them ensures that their relationship can never again be what it once was. And though Russell congratulates Johnson and pledges to work with him, he can’t help but observe that “Georgia has never voted Republican, not once. Not even during Reconstruction.” Johnson, flush with victory, is blithe: “Well, they’ll be back,” he tells Russell.

At that moment of Johnson’s sweeping victory over Goldwater, the papered-over party unity that helped Johnson avoid the label of “accidental president” he so feared seems like enough.

This is not to suggest that the 1964 and 2016 elections are identical. Among other differences, Johnson was trying to lead the Democratic Party and the country into the future, while Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and policy rhetoric are all aimed at marching back into an allegorical American past. But just as Johnson’s choices set a major realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties in motion, unifying around Trump only delays an inevitable Republican reckoning with the party’s identity crises.

And if Hillary Clinton achieves a Johnson-like victory in November, Democrats shouldn’t delude themselves that they’ve been spared a similar round of self-examination.

By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2016