How 'Caddyshack' Explains the Presidential Race

From The Atlantic via H/T at Ace of Spades HQ:

Pretty much everyone in America would like to have more money, obviously. What they don't want is to think that wealth would fundamentally change who they are. This is a basic democratic credo. Most Americans don't want to be rich so that they can develop a taste for fancy French cuisine to be enjoyed over polite repartee with their fellow snobs at the country club. They want to be rich so they can do whatever they want and never have to take crap from anyone. They don't want to be Judge Smails, in other words; they want to be Rodney Dangerfield. (Yes, technically Al Czervik, though the character is essentially an extension of Dangerfield’s longstanding persona.)

I have always dreamed about being the CEO is a massive company, walking into a meeting on Monday morning wearing hunting gear, with a shot gun in one hand and some dead birds in the other. Passing the dead birds off to the cooking staff, just before banging my .45 on the table to bring the meeting to order.

That’s where Trump comes in. Leave aside the ugly nativism, and he’s basically a real-life Czervik: rich, yes, but an aggressive anti-snob who says whatever the hell he pleases and misses no opportunity to stick it to the establishment. The GOP is Bushwood Country Club (Bushwood!) and Trump the obnoxious interloper who, owing to his wealth, can’t be tastefully ignored. (Jeb Bush is the closest obvious parallel for Judge Smails, given the name and how resolutely Trump has set out to harass him; readers can decide for themselves who fit best as Ty Webb, Carl Spackler, and the gopher.)

So does that make Carly Fiorina Lacy Underpants?

Indeed, one line of Czervik’s, in which he’s dissing Bushwood to Judge Smails, seems a remarkably apt metaphor for Trump’s evident view of the Republican Party as presently constituted: “This whole place sucks. That's right, sucks. Only reason I'm here is maybe I'll buy it.”

This is one of the funniest and most interesting connection I have ever read between real life politics and a movie.