Shades of Steve Forbes! Capra's solid State of the Union begins with a ruthless publishing heiress (played with rancid reserve by Angela Lansbury) who decides to engineer a Republican presidency. Grant Matthews (Spencer Tracy), a self-made millionaire with a bounty of gulping goodwill, is her fervent choice. A campaign trail littered with lies and duplicity is the setting for this smart satire that implicates the voters along with the venal politicians. While presidential hopeful Matthews slowly succumbs to the corruption of his handlers, Ms. Presidential Hopeful (played with blushing enthusiasm by Katharine Hepburn) acts as upright moral monkey wrench to the dismay of his thoroughly corrupt backers. Recapturing the sarcastic banter of his thirties comedies, Capra takes frank aim at a sodden GOP, that "old Harding gang." Tracy's dark-horse candidate eventually bucks the system with a wacky platform that includes a sovereign world government with full control over nuclear weaponry. But it is the prospective First Lady who has the last word when she declares, "You politicians have remained professionals only because the voters have remained amateurs."-Steve Seid