Capra's We-the-People gush is the last thing you might reasonably expect to find in a political drama inspired by the inquisition exacted by our present-day Torquemada, Ken Starr. But by the end of "The Contender," the scoundrels have been unmasked and patriotic righteousness carries the day. Amid swelling music and cheering throngs, America has been made safe for democracy.

What a crock.

"The Contender," which was written and directed by the former Los Angeles film critic Rod Lurie, is the most gutless and naive political drama of recent memory. The movie comes on profane and juicy, promising the behind-the-scenes dirt on the process of choosing and confirming a presidential appointee, only to bury itself under a steaming heap of plot contrivance, equivocation and preachiness.

Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) is a democratic senator chosen by President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) to fill the vacancy left by his vice president's unexpected death. Evans believes that bringing the first woman into the executive branch of the government will assure his niche in history. But the conservative congressman Shelly Runyon (! -- Gary Oldman), who will preside over Hanson's confirmation hearings, isn't ready to jump on the bandwagon. Among other considerations, he's miffed that a good friend of his has been passed over for the nomination.

After Runyon receives a videotape of Hanson involved in some wild and drunken frat-house group sex during her college years, he turns the hearings into an assault on her character, mixing insinuation and public posturing while pretending to play fair and square. As the questions of her qualifications and positions on crucial issues are ignored, Hanson makes things even tougher on herself by maintaining that questions about her sexual past are a private matter and refusing to address them.

There's a promising, dicey subject in all this: The childish preoccupation in some quarters of this country with the "character" of our politicians. In politics as in almost everything else, character has next to nothing to do with ability. If elected officials set a moral tone, they do so by the priorities they reveal in the legislation they sponsor and the positions they take. Lurie would seem to be endorsing that view when he has Hanson end her confirmation hearings by stating her positions on all the issues that her inquisitors have ignored.

And Hanson's insistence that her private life is separate from what qualifies her to be vice president seems to be a recognition of our moralistic preoccupations. It may be meant to recall President Clinton throwing down the gauntlet to Ken Starr by saying, "Even presidents have private lives." But "The Contender" ends up supporting the ridiculous notion that what matters in politics is the moral character of our leaders' behavior. The movie applauds Hanson because she refuses to dirty her hands with politics. Lurie wants us to believe that she's right for the job because of the purity she shows in refusing to fight back. For a feminist path-paver Hanson is startlingly retrograde, a fair maid who leaves the dirty jobs to the men around her. She's so spotless that the movie winds up saying exactly what her detractors claim (and what Clinton's enemies claimed): that any errors of personal judgment would make her unsuitable for the job.

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