Summary
There's a knock on the door, and when Saunders invites the caller in, Smith pokes his head in and asks if it's the office of Jefferson Smith. Surly, Saunders yells "No!" and Smith walks away, confused. After a moment, Saunders realizes she has made a mistake and runs to the door to call after Smith. She pulls Smith into his office and tells him he cannot just disappear like that, before introducing herself and Moore.
When Smith tells them that he went on a tour, Saunders and Moore look at him in disbelief. He talks about how beautiful the Capitol dome looked to him and the fact that he walked towards it and got on a tour bus. "I don't think I've ever been so thrilled in my whole life," he says, before extolling the magnificence of the Lincoln Memorial. Moore is silent and directs Smith towards his office, before going to "drink this over" at the bar.
Riding in a car, Smith asks Saunders about all the sites they pass, but she doesn't know much about their history. He tells her that he wants to visit even more sites before the Senate convenes.
At a bar, Saunders meets up with Moore and complains about how immature and naive Smith is. As she talks about the fact that Smith is planning to go to Mount Vernon the next day, a reporter comes up behind them, delighted that he has heard some gossip about the new senator. Even though Moore suggests she not engage with the reporter, Saunders sets up a press conference for Smith, suspicious that he's just like all the other politicians. The reporters rush out, as Saunders tells Moore that she's staging the press conference so that she can sabotage the whole thing and "quit this job in style."
At a press conference, Smith winces under the flashbulbs of the cameras surrounding him. The reporters launch questions at him and he tells them that he has an idea for the country, saying, "I thought it would be a wonderful idea to have a national boys camp out in our state...You see, if we could just get the poor kids off the streets, out of the cities for a few months in the summer and let them learn something about nature—American ideals...My idea is that the government just lends us the money for the camp and then the boys pay it back by sending pennies, nickels, nothing more than a dime."
When a female reporter asks Smith what he thinks of the women in Washington, he tells her that they are beautiful and that he has a crush on Susan Paine. Delighted by how forthcoming Smith is, the reporters ask him if he knows any bird calls, and he launches into a very high-pitched one. The scene shifts and we see a ridiculous photo of Smith doing the bird call, plugging his nose and whistling, on the cover of the newspaper, with a headline, "First 'Whiff' of Washington." We then see a number of other headlines lampooning Smith and giving the impression that he is provincial.
Over dinner, Paine looks at one of the articles, appalled, before calling Saunders in for a meeting. He asks her what she means about wanting to quit, and hands her one of the newspapers, asking how it happened. Saunders plays dumb, and insists, "I wasn't given a brain just to tell a Boy Ranger what time it is." Paine offers her a higher position in his office if she keeps her job, but she tells him she wants more money, so he offers her a bonus. Before Saunders leaves, Paine advises her to keep Smith out of politics, and she wryly asks, "Even Willet Creek Dam?"
Saunders escorts Smith to his first day in the Senate. He wanders in, wide-eyed, and takes his seat, led by a young boy. The other senators gossip about him, as Saunders takes her seat next to Moore in the balcony. When Smith takes his seat, the boy who led him there tells him that his desk used to belong to Daniel Webster. "I'm just gonna sit around and listen," says Smith, to which the boy jokingly responds, "That's the way to get reelected!" The boy then shows him the calendar for the day and a manual in the desk, when Smith asks him where the majority leader is.
The boy points out the majority and the minority leaders, then the press gallery, then a place where tourists sit. The boy introduces himself as Richard Jones and leaves. Paine comes in and greets Smith, acknowledging the bad press briefly and asking for Smith to hand over his credentials. He instructs Smith to come down the center aisle when he's called up.
As the Senate comes to order, a prayer is read, then everyone sits. Senators stand one at a time and make requests. Later, Paine presents the credentials of Smith and Smith walks forward to the president of the Senate's desk nervously. When he presents himself, a senior senator questions Smith's credentials, referring to the newspaper articles that just came out about him. Smith is confused, but Paine comes to his defense, saying that he was misquoted in the papers.
The president of the Senate swears Smith in to the Senate, and he goes back to his desk. On his way, a senator hands him a newspaper, which he looks at, ashamed.
Later, Smith sees a group of men laughing at the picture of him in the paper and punches one of them in the face. He does the same to several more men, eventually chasing the newspaperman who wanted the press conference into Diz Moore's bar of choice. When Smith tries to attack the newspaperman, a group of them sit him down and ask him what he wants. He tells them he wants the truth, which makes them laugh. "What is the truth!" exclaims Moore, as they laugh.
As the press representatives make fun of Smith, he becomes incensed, but they hold him back and insist that they always tell the truth, since they are not worried about reelection. One of the journalists tells Smith that it is the press' duty to tell the people when "phonies and crackpots come to make their laws." They question him about what he knows about politics and Moore calls him "an honorary stooge." They offer him a drink and Smith looks humiliated, before walking out of the bar with his head hung low.
Smith goes to visit Paine and complains that the newspapermen are right, that he's just a stooge. When he asks Paine to see some of the bills that are coming in, Paine tells him that they are for legal minds and he would not understand. He then encourages Smith to construct a bill for the national boys camp that he talked about in the paper, offering that Saunders will help him draft it. Smith is delighted and thanks Paine. Before Smith leaves, Susan comes into the room and greets him delightedly, asking after the pigeons, as Smith holds his hat bashfully. On his way out, Smith knocks over a table with a lamp on it. As he closes the door, Susan laughs at him, as Paine notes what honest ideals Smith has.
In his office, Smith tells Saunders that he wants to start making his bill, with Paine's blessing. Saunders is skeptical, telling Smith that his bill is going to take a lot more work than he expects it to. While he thinks he can get it done in a day with Saunders' help, Saunders suggests that it will all be much harder than he imagines, that bills have to go through so many steps and committees in order to get approved. "You can't take a bill nobody heard of and discuss it among 96 men. Where would you get?" she says. She tells him all the steps that go into passing a bill, ending in a vote. Smith's face falls as he realizes what he's up against, but he still wants to work on it.
Smith paces as Saunders takes notes, asking him specifics. Pointing at the Capitol dome, Smith says, "That's what's got to be in it: the Capitol dome. I want to make that come to life for every boy in this land. Yes, and all lighted up like that too! You see, you see, boys forget what their country means by just reading 'the land of the free' in history books. And they get to be men—they forget even more. Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: 'I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. And my children will.' Boys want to grow up remembering that."
Analysis
The film gets a great deal of comic mileage out of the contrast between Smith's simple bumpkin attitude and the more cynical, knowing attitudes of Clarissa Saunders and Diz Moore. Moore and Saunders are a dynamic duo, full of wit and spirit. Unlike the heavy hitters in politics, they can see that politics is a corrupt game and express their ambivalence about the way the field works. Saunders complains to Moore that she even wants to quit politics, but she cannot resist being "Secretary to a leader of little squirts. Why? Because I need the job and a new suit of clothes."
Saunders sets up a press conference for Smith, at which he reveals himself to be a naive country bumpkin, and shows too many of his political cards, rather than obediently taking orders as Happy Hopper had hoped. As she explains it to Moore, Saunders wants Smith to make a fool of himself so she can quit her job in style, and he does not disappoint, saying a number of completely unscripted and non-strategic things, including revealing his crush on Paine's daughter. Smith is a consummate patriot, but he is not especially versed in the sophisticated ways of politics and commerce.
Part of Saunders' resentment of Smith is that acting as his secretary is beneath her intelligence level. In a meeting with Paine, she tells him, "I wasn't given a brain just to tell a Boy Ranger what time it is." Working for Smith, in her estimation, is not making use of all her skills and faculties, which is why she's staging this rebellion in the first place. Fed up with having to play dumb and help out men she does not respect in the political sphere, Saunders is determined that she should be given more respectable duties and that she should get to work on more stimulating and worthwhile political projects.
The film, as much as it is a fictional narrative, is also a tour of Washington and a crash course in the structure of the political system there. As Smith takes his seat in the Senate, a young boy points out all the different parts of the room, where the majority and minority leaders sit, where the press gallery is, and where tourists sit to observe. The viewer thus finds themselves in the same position as Smith, led through the way things are run by a young affable tour guide.
What Smith lacks in experience and sophistication he makes up for in spirit and patriotism. When Saunders questions him about what he wants to include in his bill, he launches into a long speech about the fact that he wants to give all boys in the nation a reminder about the meaning of liberty, to reacquaint them with the national ideals that so many men lose sight of as they grow older. It turns out that Smith, in spite of being a bit of a country bumpkin, is keyed into the specific beauty of his country's ideals far more than any of the senators who look down on him. His vivacious optimism even manages to get Saunders' stubborn smirk to fall in wonder.
