• Post category:Movies
  • Post last modified:October 29, 2020

The War Room: How the Comeback Kid Won

THEY CHANGED THE WAY CAMPAIGNS ARE WON.

thewarroomAt this time, in 2008, when Senator Hillary Clinton is about to lose the race for the Democratic nomination for president, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at D.A Pennebaker and his wife Chris Hegedus’s documentary about the campaign that brought a little known Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton to the White House. It is especially clear now that Barack Obama is the Clinton of our time… while the former First Lady has in a way become George H.W. Bush.

Introducing Carville and Stephanopoulos
The film takes us behind the scenes of Governor Clinton’s campaign, from the moment he started to gain traction among voters up until the day when the American people elected him the nation’s 42nd president. We’re introduced to two highly influential members of the campaign, strategists James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. The campaign manager, David Wilhelm, wouldn’t participate, which is a shame considering his prominent position, but Carville and Stephanopoulos have enough charisma to carry the film anyway. The former is the “Ragin’ Cajun”, an explosive package who knows how to fire up the troops and loves the game of politics. We learn later in the film that he is married to one of President Bush’s campaign advisors, Mary Matalin, another political creature.
Unfortunately, we never get any insight into what Clinton or Bush thought about this situation, but apparently they accepted it and we have since learned that Carville and his wife never talk politics at home. Still, it’s a potential conflict of interest that is never fully explored in this film.

Stephanopoulos is a cooler operator, a good-looking, short Greek-American who later on became President Clinton’s communications director. He and Carville come across as the stars of the Clinton operation and they’re fascinating to watch.

Youth and vitality
The 1992 presidential election was one of the most dramatic ever. It had a president who lost even though he was certain to win just a year earlier; it introduced the first baby-boomer president; it had an influential third-party candidate who dropped out of the race and then got back in. It was the year of a timeless slogan like “it’s the economy, stupid”. And then there was Gennifer Flowers. The filmmakers capture all the drama and shows us how the strategists labor to always be ahead of the rivals. They show the youth and vitality of the Clinton campaign and contrast that with President Bush’s bitter complaints about his opponent.

The filmmakers never dig beneath the surface, but we get a feeling of actually being there to see history in the making. The hard work of the campaign is evident in the scene where Carville speaks to his colleagues on the eve of the election. His tears reveal how much he has put into this and what it means to him.

The film also makes one certain of the fact that what America and the world need now is an event of this kind. Out with the old and tired and in with a youthful, fresh choice who can rise to leadership the way Bill Clinton once did.

The War Room 1993-U.S. 95 min. Color. Produced byĀ R.J. Cutler, Wendy Ettinger, Frazer Pennebaker. Directed byĀ D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus.

Last word: “We were getting at history in a way that the general television news couldnā€™t get at. Their idea was to have the cameras at the doors of the hotelsā€¦ but it isnā€™t the real history that people want to see. You have to figure out how to get at that history. Nobody is going to give it to you, because itā€™s valuable, and nobody wants to give something valuable to people.” (Pennebaker, Filmmaker Magazine)

 

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