Separating history from hype
Ubiquitous
Wednesday 4 November 2009 20.30 GMT
By The People, a new documentary about Barack Obama's campaign for
president now airing on HBO, gets up close. We see Obama sitting on a
curb, alone, moments before taking the podium at an event. We see
Michelle Obama at home in Chicago with her children. We see the future
president riding in a convertible, waving � and we wonder: where is the
secret service? The cameras are close enough, in fact, to see the single
tear of the 2008 campaign course down Obama's face.
The film, shot over the course of two years by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams,
sketches the basic contours of the 2008 campaign, with a particular soft
spot for Obama. Key aides like David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs give
candid interviews, and many journalists give their real-time gloss on
events.
One confessional in particular stands out for its comedy and its
tragedy. The film's first interview with Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau
seats him, theatrically, near a photo of Ted Sorensen, John Kennedy's
wordsmith, as he waxes on about how speeches should aim to echo Camelot.
But as the campaign wears on, the romance wears thin. By June � after
the Iowa caucuses, Super Tuesday, superdelegates and the 3am phone call
ad � Favreau summarises what is now just one of many election-night
speeches he's written for the candidate: "We won, thank you other
candidates, Hillary you're great, McCain, blah blah blah. Hope, change.
You know."
Victory speeches, it seems, like happy families, are all alike. And
campaigns � no matter how many times the words "juggernaut",
"unprecedented", or "historic" are applied � leave little substance to
hold on to once they come to a close.
The documentary faithfully replays the greatest hits of electoral
controversy in 2008. Cringe along as Obama tells Hillary Clinton:
"You're likeable enough". Watch former Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright
"damn" America a tenth or hundredth time. Listen as Republican ing�nue
Sarah Palin stokes paranoia about "terrorists".
Yet, reliving the most stressful year of my journalistic life (What was
the chattering class doing at 3am? Refreshing polling websites), I felt
nothing. Yes, it was stirring to remember the spontaneous chants of
"race doesn't matter" or revisit the euphoria of Obama's nomination
acceptance speech in Denver. But it's also a sour reminder of the days
when the president's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser � an
incident known, clunkily, as "Bittergate" � swamped the airwaves.
Even Obama had trouble keeping up. Asked at one point in the film if he
was having time to "reflect on what is happening" to him, he answered
honestly, and curtly: "No."
There's a lesson here. After a campaign that spent an inordinate amount
of time obsessing about minutiae like whether Michelle Obama had or had
not used the word "whitey" on a secret audiotape, why is the American
political class, fuelled by conservative grassroots anger, still
obsessing about the president's birth certificate, "death panels", which
congressperson dissed whom and whether the designation "tsar" can be
taken literally or not?
We should remember how a perfect thriller of a campaign can be reduced
to nothingness with only the passage of time. Forget Wright's booming
soundbites. In fact, it's the quiet and unexpected moments that rocked
campaign 2008 � the failing banks of 15 September, the pledge to fight
the "good war" in Afghanistan and the pitched battle over whether to
include an individual mandate in a healthcare reform bill � that laid
the true foundation for our current political debate.
Obama has done a remarkable job since taking office of advancing past
the campaign-era fault lines within the Democratic party. Former rivals
like Hillary Clinton and avowed Republicans like US army secretary John
McHugh are now firmly on his team. And the president, as Peter Baker
wrote in the New York Times, "has discovered that the oratory that
proved so powerful on the campaign trail does not as easily move votes
on Capitol Hill or stir souls in the Kremlin." In other words, he's
learning the limits of symbolism.
But the rest of the country hasn't been able to let go of the instinct
to leap and pounce on every gaffe, every tic and every wild-eyed
conspiracy theory that trickles its way into the political bloodstream.
As a result of the pumped-up, 24-hour spinfest, some Americans
undoubtedly missed the major themes in the 2008 campaign that are now
central to the much-less-sexy project of governing.
The McCain campaign's gimmick of distributing tire gauges labelled
"Obama's energy policy", for example, took attention away from the
substance of the debate on oil prices and energy security. Purveyors of
these stunts are irresponsible, manipulative and, sadly, ever-present �
even among the ranks of our current elected officials.
One year after Obama's historic (I said it) win, we must face reality:
History distils even the most exciting elections into bullet points that
are entirely unpredictable at the time. "I feel your pain", Michael
Dukakis in the tank, Richard Nixon's sweaty lip. These close-ups from
the campaign trail tell us nothing about the men who won and lost. We
must let them go and turn from voyeurs to doers, both during election
season and when the hard work of governing begins.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.