Who is jefferson smith

Paine asked for Smith's credentials and told Smith to wait for his signal. As Paine took his own seat, the Vice President called the Senate to order, and then had to call the roll, after Senator Milton Agnew, Democratic Party leader, suggested the absence of a quorum.

At length, the roll call was completed, and then Paine rose to present Smith's credentials and ask that Smith be sworn in.

As Smith approached the podium, another Senator raised a point of order, saying that Smith had conducted himself in a sensationally improper and comical manner on his arrival in Washington. A baffled Smith tried to defend himself, but the VP reminded him that he was not permitted to speak until sworn in.

Paine answered the question, however, saying that Smith had been misquoted. Although one other Senator tried to object, the VP firmly overruled all other objections, and administered to Smith the Constitutional oath.

On his way to his desk, Smith stopped at another Senator's desk, where the Washington Gazette-Journal was on display. There he saw what Senator Agnew had been talking about: it was his interview with all those reporters, and the story made him out to be a total clown! Directly after the Senate finished for the day, Smith went out onto the streets of Washington, hunted down the reporters in turn, and slugged each one. He chased three into the National Press Club, where Diz Moore, another reporter named Sweeney, and several other reporters tackled him and shoved him into a booth.

Then they proceeded to tell him that he had no business being in the Senate, because he didn't even know what a Senator did, or how a bill became a law. Mortified, Smith went to see Joe Paine at his home.

He complained that he couldn't answer those reporters' criticisms with any justice, because he had to admit that he was an empty suit decorating a chair. He asked for guidance in understanding the bills, and for reasons that he would understand only later, Paine was evasive and said,. Paine then suggested that if Smith was serious about establishing a National Boys' Camp, then he should get his secretary, Saunders, to help him draft a bill to do just that.

He also met Susan Paine once again. He was still unused to the attentions of a woman, and Susan Paine's glamorous appearance dazzled him.

He was so distracted that he couldn't even hold on to his hat, and as he took his leave, he knocked over a table lamp and several items of bric-a-brac, and perhaps never noticed that Susan Paine was doing her best to stifle her giggles. An excited Smith rushed back to his own office and breathlessly told Saunders his intention. Saunders at first protested, and then asked if she could "give [Smith] a little idea of what [he was] up against. Undeterred, Smith began dictating his bill as rapidly as he could.

He spoke of putting the "spirit" of his intent into the bill, and cited the nearby Capitol Dome, of which his office gave him a full view, for inspiration.

In the middle of his dictation, he pressed Saunders to tell him her first name: Clarissa. At length he gave the location of the camp: two hundred acres of the region of the headwaters of Willett Creek in Ambrose County.

Saunders asked him whether he had discussed that with Senator Paine. Distracted, he said he had. Privately, he wondered why Saunders should ask about Willett Creek when she had never been to Colorado in her life.

The next day, Smith appeared in the Senate and, when permitted, jumped to his feet shouting for recognition. The Vice President gently reminded him that he could and should speak in a normal tone of voice, just loud enough to be heard in the chamber. Smith knew he was nervous, and was conscious of the rest of the Senate laughing at him. But he plowed on, reading his bill aloud as the Senate rules call for. When he was finished, several small boys in the galleries shouted for joy, prompting the Vice President to pound his gavel on his desk as Smith handed his bill to the Senate clerk.

In all the excitement, Smith did not notice his colleague, Joe Paine, leaving the Senate floor in the middle of his speech. Nor did he notice Chick McGann at the same moment leaving the section of the gallery reserved for the friends of Senators. The only person in the gallery that he noticed was Saunders, sitting next to the railing dividing the friends' section from the press section—though why she should be so intent in conversation with Diz Moore, he didn't figure out just then.

His mind was too distracted to think of such things. He rushed back to his office at the end of the day, brimming with excitement, and had to run through a gauntlet of constituents, one person trying to get him to sponsor an invention, and several publicity agents trying to sign him as a client. Saunders dragged him in and shut the crowd out, for which he was grateful. Then he noticed the letters—hundreds of letters already arrived, containing the first of the one- to ten-cent contributions that his bill had specified that boys all over America should make in order to reimburse the government for the expense of acquiring the land and setting up the camp.

Saunders had even rigged a large glass jar with a slotted lid that he could use as a bank to collect the contributions. Smith then announced that he would be busy for several more hours, writing letters home, including one to his mother, in which he promised to tell her all about Saunders, who should then expect to receive a jar of fresh fruit preserves as a special present.

At this point his office telephone rang. Saunders answered it. Smith gathered, from listening to Saunders, that Susan Paine was on the line. A minute later, Saunders passed the phone to Smith. Handling it with difficulty, considering who was on the other end of the line, Smith took the call.

Susan Paine then dazzled him with an invitation to serve as her escort to a ball that would take place the following day, with several foreign princes as her guests.

Of course he accepted the invitation, and then allowed Saunders to drag him to a clothes store, a shoe store, a haberdashery, and a barber shop. The next scene, in which Smith appeared in the Paine home, clad in the first tuxedo he had ever worn in his life, takes place off-camera. The other guests admired his newfound sartorial splendor, and Susan Paine was, if anything, more beautiful than ever.

When the party was concluded, Susan looked him in the eyes, and said, "Thank you, Mr. Smith," and he could have dropped through the floor if a trap door had opened at that moment. He returned to his office, and to his surprise, Saunders was not present. He took off his dinner jacket, loosened his bow tie, and waited. Then Saunders came in, with Diz Moore in tow.

Smith began to tell Saunders about his evening, but then Saunders, in an almost sarcastic tone, anticipated everything that he was going to tell. Then she said a word that shocked him to the core:. Smith was flabbergasted. He could do nothing but watch as Saunders started cleaning out her desk, all the while rambling on about how she was at last quitting. She even reintroduced Diz as the man she was going to marry, a thing that Smith might or might not have been able to believe, because she and Diz simply did not strike one another as a couple in love.

And then Saunders, after saying something to herself about "doing this right," went to the filing cabinet, drew out the draft of what was obviously another bill, and advanced on Smith.

She showed him what she had in her hand: a "Deficiency Bill," with several sections discussing "emergency deficiency appropriations. Furthermore, she said, that very bill had been read aloud in the Senate that day, while he was at that party—and the very reason for his invitation was to keep him out of the Senate so that he wouldn't hear about it!

Saunders went on, working herself up into a more distressed state with every word she spoke. She spoke of Jim Taylor, whom Smith had met only once, at that banquet held in honor of his appointment, a banquet that now seemed a lifetime ago. Saunders also spoke of graft, and a machine that Taylor controlled.

And then she said,. And then, about ready to collapse in tears, she summoned Diz and rushed out of the office, leaving Smith alone. Smith first called Kenneth Allen, who owned some of the land where he used to take his Boy Rangers camping, and asked him about the proposed Willett Dam. Allen didn't seem to know anything about it. He was mildly surprised to see Chick McGann there, but he didn't care about him, or about how Susan Paine had invited him to be her escort just to divert him from the Senate.

His primary concerns, even laying aside the obvious conflict with his own bill, were twofold:. Smith then said that he would not vote on that bill until he got some answers. Paine told him to stop tilting at windmills, or trying to understand in a moment a bill that had taken months to draft.

Then Smith asked, "Who's Taylor? Chick wanted to know why Smith was asking, and Smith laid it on the line: that he had been informed that the Willett Dam project was Jim Taylor's idea for graft. Chick McGann abruptly got out of his sofa, walked out of the room, and closed the folding partition. Paine, meanwhile, protested that Jeff had just insulted him by suggesting that he, Paine, was helping to put forward a scheme for graft.

The next day, Saunders, of course, was gone. But Smith didn't have time to think about hiring another secretary. He sought out three members of the Colorado House delegation, one of whom represented the district that included Ambrose County, and demanded from them everything they knew about the Willett Dam project.

Eventually he received an invitation—actually more like a summons—to appear at the Madison Hotel, this time in a suite newly occupied by Jim Taylor. There he met Taylor for the second time in his life, and also saw the three members of the House delegation whom he had been questioning earlier. Taylor proceeded to tell him that he, Taylor, could guarantee him an executive position in any business in Colorado, or any political office he wished, for as long as he wished to hold it.

Taylor even said that those three Representatives, and Senator Paine, all were "smart" and took his "advice. Smith lost no time in going to see Senator Paine in his office. Paine's staff, a much larger staff than Smith had ever had, told Smith that Paine was out of town. Which Smith knew to be impossible, so he barged into Paine's private office.

Paine was present, and in a good-natured manner asked whether Smith had had a talk with Jim Taylor. Smith got right to the point: that Taylor had boasted that he had been telling Paine what to do for twenty years, and he, Smith, had called Taylor a liar.

Paine, to Smith's horror, confirmed Taylor's account. He said that twenty years earlier, Paine had had Smith's ideals, but then had had a decision to make, and had compromised. Paine said that as a result of that compromise, he had been able to place Colorado in the enviable position of having the lowest unemployment and the highest Federal grants. Finally he begged Smith not to say anything in the Senate about the Willett Dam project.

Smith did not heed Paine's advice. He was determined to fight Section Forty and get it stricken from the Deficiency Bill. So when the time came for his five-minute alloted time to speak on that section, he rose to speak. Abruptly, Paine asked Smith to yield the floor to him, and Smith agreed. Then Paine dumbfounded him by accusing him, in front of the whole Senate, of running his own scheme for graft: that he had bought the very land described in his National Boys' Camp bill the day following his appointment to the Senate, and intended to turn a handsome profit on the resale of the land to the government!

Smith could say nothing to this. Visitors in the gallery booed him, and young pages took off their Boy Ranger pins. The hearings in the Committee on Privileges and Elections in real life, this is the Senate Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, or "The Ethics Committee" were like something out of that novel by that weird German author, Franz Kafka , titled The Trial assuming that Jeff Smith ever read anything by Kafka, which he might have done, even to keep up with yet another book that Adolf Hitler had ordered burnt.

He saw a deed of record showing him to be the owner of the two-hundred-acre plot that included Willett Creek, and, worse yet, a contract, with his signature on it, saying that he promised Kenneth Allen fifty percent of any profits that he might make on the sale of that land. Email editor ballotpedia. Current members of the Oregon House of Representatives. Speaker of the House: Tina Kotek. District 1. David Smith R. Christine Goodwin R.

Cedric Hayden R. Boomer Wright R. David Gomberg D. Nancy Nathanson D. Shelly Boshart Davis R. Dan Rayfield D. Rick Lewis R. Raquel Moore-Green R.

Paul Evans D. Teresa Leon D. Courtney Neron D. Sheri Schouten D. WInsvey Campos D. Susan McLain D. Janeen Sollman D. Bradley Witt D. Suzanne Weber R. Maxine Dexter D. Dacia Grayber D. Lisa Reynolds D. Rachel Prusak D. Newspapers and radio stations in Smith State, funded by Taylor, refuse to publish Smith's statement, denigrate him in their headlines and go so far as to mount popular demonstrations and petitions against him. Only the Boy Rangers newspaper, outside Taylor's influence, proclaims that Smith is telling the truth.

Taylor brutally intervenes his men to prevent children from distributing their newspapers, even throwing a truck at the car they were using for their distribution. Although all hopes seem to have been lost, senators are beginning to be shaken by Smith's stubbornness, pushed to the point of exhaustion. But Paine plays his last card: he brings in baskets full of letters and telegrams from Smith's state, from middle-class people manipulated by the media, wishing to be expelled from the Senate.

Almost devastated by these petitions, Smith found a leap of hope in the friendly smile of the Senate Speaker. Smith then made the promise not to go out until no one believed him; he begged Paine to remember the ideals of his beginnings, then immediately collapsed from exhaustion. Feeling guilty, probably believing in Smith's death, Paine left the Senate Chamber, tried to commit suicide with a firearm but was prevented from doing so. While Smith - who is only unconscious - is evacuated, Paine returns to the Chamber and confesses the whole truth about his manipulations.

He asks to be expelled himself and affirms Smith's innocence, still unconscious but ultimately victorious. Jefferson Smith is incredibly naive but also idealistic, completely honest and in love with nature.

He is also endowed with immense determination and incredible endurance. Heroes Wiki. Heroes Wiki Explore. Top Content. Bureaucrats Jester of Chaos. Pure Good Terms. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Jefferson Smith. View source. History Talk 0. Do you like this video?