The War Room

"The War Room is by the great documentarian D A Pennebaker, who also made the Bob Dylan film Don’t Look Back and directed Primary which was one of the first political documentaries about one of the primary contests in 1960 between Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. And Pennebaker couldn’t get access to Bill Clinton, though he’s in the film a little bit. But he did get access to James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, who turned out to be great characters for a film. So it’s really about the Clinton campaign through their eyes, a behind-the-scenes look at what these two key spin doctors are doing in shaping the Clinton campaign. Now, it was subject to some constraints. I wouldn’t say actual censorship; it’s not as if the Clinton campaign censored the final product. But Pennebaker didn’t have unlimited access so he, you might say inevitably, ends up showing up these guys in a mostly favourable light. Although there are a few scenes in there where they don’t come off so well… Get the weekly Five Books newsletter This film is important for a couple of reasons. One, it marks this sense of the handlers becoming newsworthy in their own right. To have this theatrical release of a documentary about two campaign consultants, is, in some ways, a watershed. It’s also important because, for me at least, the 1992 Clinton campaign was the last political romance. I suppose some people have it with Obama. But for my generation the Clinton 1992 campaign was the last moment before cynicism set in. Or rather it was a recognition of the cynicism of politics. What was appealing about Clinton was that unlike previous Democratic leaders he was not above fighting back with a “War Room.” Liberals were finally recognizing that “it’s okay to engage in politics, it’s OK to engage in spin”. It’s not (as Plato would have argued) this corrupt business to be avoided at all costs, and we have to win just by the purity of our motives. You fight back, you put out your own spin, and you trust that you can win at that game. Previously, whenever Democrats would lose, they would blame it on Lee Atwater – or more recently with Karl Rove, that sort of sensibility has returned. Of course, conservatives do the same thing, they say: “Oh Clinton was just a good talker, he was just a good communicator.” They couldn’t recognize what his popularity was based on, that he had genuinely appealing policies that people liked. But to come back to the film, Pennebaker set out to expose or illuminate the process of spin, but he winds up making this romance. And I think there is this danger in every generation: those who set out to illuminate spin find themselves in the position of contributing to it more."