Madam Secretary, Ohio wants change, America wants change and Ohio cast a 144 votes for the next President! At the beginning of 1992, nothing predicted that the Democrats would win the upcoming presidential election. After the successful completion of Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush’s approval rating jumped to 89 percent and his re-election seemed imminent, despite his breaking his campaign promise of “Read my lips: no new taxes,” strained relations with the conservative wing of the GOP, and an economic downturn. Nor did I erase from memory the crushing defeat of Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, despite the fact that at the beginning of the campaign he was ahead of Bush by 14% of the vote. And in light of these prospects, many influential Democrats refused to run: New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, House Speaker Tom Foley, etc. In the end, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton became the Democratic nominee and election winner, a victory that came as a shock to many. How could an inexperienced governor with a heap of dark stories (marital infidelity, evasion of service in Vietnam) defeat the much more experienced and politically sophisticated George H.W. Bush? This film answers that question.
The film is set during the February 1992 New Hampshire primary (one of the two most important primaries for a potential candidate, along with Iowa). Gov. Clinton should easily win it in all polls, but opponents prepared a bombshell for the governor in the form of a press conference with dancer Jennifer Flowers, where she claimed a 12-year extramarital affair with the candidate and even provided audio recordings of her conversations. After such a story, the Clinton campaign seems at first destroyed, but the chief campaign strategist James Carville comes into play, creating The War Room - an informal committee inside the campaign aimed at effectively running the campaign. And at the first meeting of members of The War Room, Carville sets as the main goal not to release negative commercials against fellow Democratic candidate Paul Tsongas, but to show Clinton as the only possible alternative to Bush Sr. Clinton also managed to soften the blow from the scandalous interview, speaking with his wife Hillary in the program 60 Minutes, where he and his wife denied all gossip. Even despite the snub of some political scientists who predicted that “Clinton won’t last a week,” the candidate manages to take second place in the New Hampshire primary, behind winner Paul Tsongas by only a few percent. And that second place gave a fresh boost to the Clinton campaign ("New Hampshire has made Bill Clinton tonight a comeback kid"). . .
The documentary genre knows many examples of campaign films (1974, une partie de campagne about the successful campaign of Valerie Giscard D’Estaing, Primary about the election campaign of John F. Kennedy), but what makes this picture so special that it was even nominated for an Oscar?
The main feature of this film is its style. The authors were able to place the nine-month campaign in the format of an hour-and-a-half film, not missing a single important point: the famous verbal spat between Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown during the Illinois primary, the selection as a vice presidential candidate of Senator from Tennessee Al Gore, Clinton’s lag behind George Bush and Ross Perot in the August poll, Clinton’s official approval at the Democratic convention in New York, the unexpected exit and return to the election campaign of independent candidate Ross Perot, etc.
It should also be said that the main character of this documentary is not Clinton, but the aforementioned chief campaign strategist James Carville and Clinton's press secretary George Stephanopoulos. And thanks to the authors’ emphasis on these people, the viewer gets the opportunity to see the election campaign process from the “machine room”, and not just from the “bridge”. From this perspective, we see the process of creating several successful attacks on Bush, in particular, the negative publicity on the topic of Bush’s broken campaign promise “Read my lips: no new taxes”, the use of a report from Brazilian television reporting that all Republican campaign literature is printed in Brazil, which contradicted Bush’s assertion that he would do his best to protect the American market. Also, the Clinton campaign actively used new information opportunities, in particular popular talk shows, MTV, where Republicans had no leverage and this helped win votes among young people and minorities.
And inserts from George H.W. Bush's campaign show the changing attitude of Republicans toward Clinton's candidacy. If in New Hampshire, Bush is overconfident and says he is waiting for the end of this company and is fed up with snotty liberal Democrats, then after the successful Democratic convention in New York, he is forced at the Republican convention not to mention his economic policies. There was also a debate in St. Louis, where Bush failed to clearly explain how U.S. debt affected his life, and Clinton said his experience as governor of Arkansas helps him understand the aspirations of ordinary Americans ("Every year Congress passes laws that oblige us to do more things for less money.") When factories close, I know who ran them. .).
It also helps that the action takes place in just three locations: New Hampshire, New York and Little Rock, Arkansas. And it helps to focus the viewer’s attention on the main events of the campaign, without spraying his attention on secondary details.
Summing up, I want to say that it turned out a very interesting film about the process of the election campaign, but to view it you need to have a good command of English.
9 out of 10.