Right wing docu-paper
barackobama.com - A screengrab is shown from the trailer of “The Road We've Traveled,”
By Hank Stuever,
“The Road We’ve Traveled” is an aggressively upbeat, 17-minute hit-parade review of President Obama’s first term. The film
streamed online, live, Thursday night via the president’s savvy
new-media reelection machine. Although it has been artfully referred to
as a documentary, it is, of course, a piece of propaganda. Perhaps less
pejoratively, let’s tweak that word and call “The Road We’ve Traveled”
what it mostly is: docu-ganda.
This one is for the fans, and I think you know who you are.
It was directed by Davis Guggenheim, who made the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”
(as well as docs about education reform, electric guitars and the pop
band U2). It is narrated by the ubiquitous Tom Hanks, who reads the
script with “Apollo 13”-like sincerity. (“How do we understand this president and his time in office? . . .
As president, the tough decisions that he would make would not only
determine the course of the nation, but they would reveal the character
of the man.”)
It is not sappy so much as it is busy, but there are
moments at which it could be described as a moving tribute to American
resilience during the Great Recession — that is, if one is able to be
moved on the subject of this administration, which a lot of people
aren’t. And as a sort of official opening salvo in the 2012 campaign, it
is rich with all the things Obama’s harshest critics despise most: his
charisma, his assuredness, his way with words. His fame.
In one
way, the film is a masterful stroke — exactly the kind of thing you want
to have around if you’re trying to persuade Americans to keep you in
office, brought to you by Hollywood at a reported cost of at least
$345,000, according to the Associated Press. Fact checkers and GOP
campaign workers will no doubt pore over its content for the next news
cycle or two, looking for places where accentuating the positive has
edged closer to exaggeration. Still, some basic truths emerge and are
duly touted, most notably the rescue of the auto industry, withdrawing
U.S. troops from Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
It’s
less of a bragging moment and more like a contractor’s bid for renewal.
It’s a working résumé, a high-budget PowerPoint. As a hired gun,
Guggenheim is tasked with cramming a lot into his short amount of time.
For
the campaign, this has the beneficial effect of turning Obama’s first
term into a litany of victories — adding “3.5 million jobs” to the
private sector, appointing two Supreme Court justices, redirecting
education reforms, addressing pay disparities between genders, forging
ahead on renewable energy, confronting the mortgage crisis. But that
haste — combined with the high-gloss commercial feel of the film — can
also be overly concise, to the point that the entire struggle over
health-care reform is winnowed down to a couple of minutes, spinning the
resultant compromise into a win-win.
Obama supporters will find a
lot to like about “The Road We’ve Traveled,” and some will no doubt see
it as an overdue rallying cry, more cool than folksy. The narrowing of
the Republican field has meant months of Obama-bashing, which the
president has hardly engaged. At the same time, many of Obama’s 2008
supporters have drifted and expressed doubts. A hard-core Obama fan
admires the president for taking the high road but often seeks refuge in
the arms of Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, or in Michelle Obama’s
frequent appearances on talk shows and her late-night funnin’ around in
the name of nutrition and exercise.
“Key & Peele,” a sketch
show on Comedy Central, has found an especially enjoyable way of
interpreting that frustration, where Obama (played by Jordan Peele)
addresses the American people with that steady calmness, while his
personal “anger translator” Luther (Keegan-Michael Key) screams what’s really on the president’s mind (“This is RIDICULOUS! I HAVE A BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!”).
Guggenheim’s
film isn’t anything like that. Its only overt moment of campaign
politics is when the camera zones in on an op-ed by GOP contender Mitt
Romney that argued against a Detroit bailout. Instead, the film gets
those who know Obama to talk about how high the odds were that this
administration would be able to accomplish anything. “The Road We’ve
Traveled” joins a long line of similar docu-ganda, dating to “A Place
Called Hope,” which wowed ’em the night Bill Clinton accepted the
Democratic nomination in 1992.
Guggenheim might think he’s
accomplished something higher. When CNN’s Piers Morgan was interviewing
Guggenheim last week about “The Road We’ve Traveled,” he asked the
filmmaker to name one negative thing about Obama that could have been
included in the film. What followed was a laughable exchange between
Morgan, who seemed to miss the point of propaganda, and Guggenheim, who
finally said that the only negative thing was that the president had too
many accomplishments. “Oh, come off it,” Morgan jibed. “You can’t say
that with a straight face. The only negative thing about Barack Obama is there are too many positives?!”
Perhaps
everyone should get his own docu-ganda. Obama will have this one, and
surely more. The eventual Republican nominee will get his.
We all
know how to make a piece of docu-ganda. Any decent laptop provides all
the tools you’ll need. We all know when to let the music swell; we know
which stock footage will best suit the feelings we’re trying to emote.
Enterprising high school seniors started sending video résumés along
with college applications decades ago; now families upload brilliantly
edited home movies so that the world will know how happy they are, how
well things are going. It’s like those beautiful movies made by energy
corporations, filled with sunshine, flowers, turbines.
Everyone likes to have a little favorable smoke blown in their direction. Might as well blow some.
The Road We’ve Traveled
(17 minutes) can be viewed at BarackObama.com or on YouTube.
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