Summary
Taylor goes into the next room to speak to Smith. Taylor makes an elaborate speech, telling Smith that he will help his career if Smith complies with his interests, but Smith does not fall for it, saying, "You mean you tell these men and Senator Paine what to do?" Taylor agrees, telling him that Paine's been taking his advice for 20 years. "You're a liar," Smith says, abruptly leaving.
Smith goes to visit Paine, but his secretary tells him he's out of town. Not believing this, Smith rushes into Paine's office and confronts him about the fact that Taylor said he's been taking his advice for 20 years. Paine tries to talk sense to Smith, saying, "I was hoping you'd be spared all this. I was hoping that you'd see the sights, absorb a lot of history, and go back to your boys. Now you've been living in a boy's world, Jeff, and for heaven's sakes, stay there! This is a man's world. It's a brutal world Jeff, and you've no place in it. You'll only get hurt. Now take my advice. Forget Taylor and what he said. Forget you ever heard of the Willet Creek Dam...I know it's tough to run head-on into facts but, well as I said, this is a man's world Jeff, and you've got to check your ideals outside the door, like you do your rubbers."
Paine tells Smith that he was once like him, but that he chose to compromise in order to serve his state and do what he can. Taylor has been behind his reelection time and again, and this is a compromise he has had to make in order to serve his country. He asks Smith not to pursue his bill and Smith leaves, dejected.
The next day in the Senate, representatives read the bill that includes the Willet Creek Dam. After hesitating a moment, Smith stands and asks about Section 40 of the bill. Fearing exposure, Paine fights back against Smith, trying to frame the Willet Creek Dam as Smith's crime, and the boys' camp as a scheme to make a profit. The Senate erupts in boos about Smith's apparent corruption.
After the Senate meeting, the press explodes with news of Smith's fall from grace. Moore calls and leaks the news as the scene shifts to a meeting of the Privileges and Elections Committee discussing the issue. Hopper and Paine each testify falsely and present forged documents alleging that Smith is trying to profit off the dam and the boys' camp. "I never signed any such contract!" yells Smith, indignant.
Several experts examine Smith's signature, some concluding it is forged, others not. As Paine testifies against Smith, Smith looks completely bewildered, before coming up to the chair to testify. Paine will not look at Smith, and Smith flees from the room, overwhelmed by the manipulation.
At a party, Taylor entertains groups of politicians who laugh about the whole affair, while Paine sits on a couch looking defeated. Meanwhile, Smith is at the Lincoln Memorial, staring up at the statue of the president, disturbed by the betrayal he has suffered. Carrying his luggage, he sits down in the shadows of a pillar and weeps.
Suddenly, Saunders wanders up from behind the pillar and says, "I see by the papers you certainly got to be a senator." Smith tells Saunders she was right to tell him to return home and not get mixed up in politics. "There are a lot of fancy words around this town. Some of them are carved in stone. Some of 'em, I guess the Taylors and Paines have put 'em up there so suckers like me can read 'em. Then when you find out what men actually do—Well, I'm gettin' out of this town so fast and away from all the words and the monuments and the whole rotten show," Smith says.
Saunders tries to comfort Smith, telling him that if he quits, the people that support him back home will be disappointed in him. "Your friend Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines. So did every other man whoever tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against 'em didn't stop those men. They were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that," she says. "Clarissa, where can we get a drink?" Smith asks her, and she invites him over to her place.
The next day at the Senate, Smith arrives in a rush and answers attendance loudly. He takes his seat at his desk as it starts. Saunders sits in the press gallery and gives Smith a wave, before telling Moore to pray. "Are you crazy?" Moore says, and Saunders nods. As the Senate meeting begins, a senator proposes the expulsion of Smith.
Smith stands to speak, and when the president almost does not let him, Saunders yells, "Let him speak!" and many other members of the upper gallery chime in similarly. Smith makes a speech in his own defense, and Paine tries to interrupt him several times, trying to get him to yield to questioning. Paine tries to suggest that everything concerning the Willet Creek Dam was dealt with in committee hearing, and asks if he has any evidence to present.
Smith passionately tells the president about Taylor, his bribery and manipulation. Paine tries to defend his own honor, suggesting that Smith is trying to completely dismantle his integrity as a senator. When Smith tells the Senate that Paine was in the room with Taylor when Taylor tried to bribe Smith, Paine does not deny it, and the people in the room gasp in shock. Paine says that Taylor was in that room to reveal the evidence against Smith's corruption, again twisting the story to frame Smith.
After angrily degrading Smith, Paine leaves the Senate in a huff. Smith requests a chance to speak to people from his own state about what is happening. "They know me. And they know Mr. Taylor. And when they hear my story, they'll rise up and they'll kick Mr. Taylor's machine to kingdom come. Now I want one week to go back there and bring you proof that I'm right. And in the meantime, I want this Senate's promise that I will not be expelled and that the Deficiency Bill will not be passed," he says. Senators protest, suggesting that the bill has been stalled for too long and that it will put public services on hold, leaving people without shelter or food. Smith snarls, "The people of my state need permanent relief from crooked men riding their backs."
When the senators leave the room in protest, Smith agrees to speak to the people from his state from there, initiating a filibuster, a prolonged speech that will obstruct the progress of the bill. Smith takes food and drink out of his jacket, prepared to speak for as long as it takes. The members are the press are delighted and rush off to break the news.
Analysis
Taylor tries to "steamroll" Smith into complying with his interests, suggesting that he will help the young man have a political career if he does not ask too many questions. Smith, ever the pure-hearted patriot, does not fall for it, and is miffed to hear that this is how the government is run. James Stewart, playing Jefferson Smith, plays the earnest and absorbent Washington newbie with a guileless nobility, his face falling as he puts together the crooked pieces, and the viewer sees that, though the odds are stacked against him, he will continue to fight for what is right.
Paine tries to discourage Smith from speaking truth to power by suggesting that Smith is a boy in a man's world. By minimizing the honesty and sincerity of Smith's political project, Paine hopes to discourage Smith from sticking to his principles. Made cynical by the bureaucracy of Washington, Paine suggests that in order to be a grown man working in the system, one must be prepared to make compromises—compromises that involve bending to the wills of gangsters and crooks. In this moment, Paine represents the entire broken system, and though he was a friend of Smith's idealistic father, it is clear that he has long lost that idealistic spirit.
What Paine admits to Smith in his office is essentially the fact that democracy is a broken system. He tells Smith that the only reason he has been able to serve in the Senate is the fact that Taylor has used money to ensure that he stay there. By compromising and working with Taylor, Paine has been able to carry on a relatively honest political career and do what he can, but he tells Smith, "You can't count on people voting. Half the time they don't vote anyway. That's how states and empires have been built since time began."
When Smith gets betrayed in the Senate, his bright-eyed optimism and earnest belief in the American system hardens into disillusionment and anger. At the Lincoln Memorial, he tells Saunders that she was right to warn him against the crookedness of Washington, and bemoans the fact that a man he has long admired, Paine, is nothing more than a manipulable crook. After cultivating such hopeful ideas and drafting a bill that ran on an innocent belief about boyhood and the power of nature, Smith gets burned by the nefarious system in which he has put so much of his faith.
It is Saunders who acts as the catalyst for Smith standing up for himself in the Senate. When she just happens to be at the Lincoln Memorial on the night that Smith goes there himself, she reminds him that he has a responsibility to speak up on behalf of the people and expose the corruption of the government, a project that she has long wanted to pursue herself. She acts as a stand-in for Smith's conscience, advising him to work for the common good rather than bow down to the corruption, invoking the memory of Lincoln and his legacy.
