THE STUMP MARCH 16, 2012
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It’s very hard to watch “The Road We’ve Traveled,” 17-minute documentary the Obama campaign released Thursday night, and not be impressed by its underlying premise, which is that the president inherited a terrible set of crises, and that we’re in far better shape thanks to his efforts. The video succeeds in recreating the clammy terror of the financial crisis, and in calling up the sense of relief you felt when this obviously serious and composed young president spoke so fluently about how we’d get out of it. It catalogues a record of legislative accomplishment that would inspire feelings of inadequacy in most two-term administrations. And, above all, it manages to equate rooting for the country with rooting for Obama in a way that feels perfectly natural rather than heavy-handed or self-serving.
For my money, the two most moving and persuasive portions of the film relate to the auto bailout and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Perhaps not coincidentally, both give prominent airtime to Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, who turn out to be far more compelling than anyone else on-screen—or, for that matter, the voice of God that Tom Hanks channels in his role as narrator.
Clinton highlights the problem with letting the automakers go, as almost everyone but Obama seemed to be urging at times, with his trademark finger-wagging intensity: “People have no earthly idea what would have happened not only to the economy, but to our self-image.” When it comes to bin Laden, the former president pays his successor a remarkable compliment: “He took the harder and the more honorable path. When I saw what had happened—I thought to myself, I hope that’s the call I would have made.” It was a rare Clintonian accomplishment: stealing the show while leaving the other guy standing at the center of it.
Biden, for his part, offers an elegant setup to Clinton’s bin Laden coda, narrating a scene in which Obama goes around the table and finds pretty much every adviser hedging, then excuses himself to make up his mind. “It dawned on me, he’s all alone,” Biden says. “This is his decision. If he was wrong, presidency was done. Over.” It was a moment that actually merited its vice presidential hyperbole, even if a failed presidency would hardly have been the biggest casualty of botching the bin Laden raid.
Still, as much as the documentary affected me emotionally, it didn’t entirely work intellectually, and I’m not sure it was perfectly executed as an exercise in political persuasion. I counted two major problems: First, even more than the stimulus, the real key to preventing a depression was the financial rescue. But the film can’t do more than mention this in passing because of the lingering resentment toward the trillions of dollars in loans, guarantees, and other goodies that the government gave the banks. (I personally think the goodies were too good—we didn’t need to be so generous to the banks. But that doesn’t mean these goodies weren’t effective at saving the financial system.)
That leads to the second problem: Having spent the first few minutes laying out the scale of the economic emergency the president faced, the film couldn’t very well slice out the most critical part of his response without replacing it with something equally meaty. Unfortunately, that something turns out to be pretty unpersuasive as an economic fix: Health care. The film essentially argues that the economic circumstances forced the president’s hand on health care reform. Hanks explains how health care was “a crisis that others wanted to avoid” and that it was “crushing family budgets, choking business.” “He knew he couldn’t fix economy if he didn’t fix health care,” Hanks instructs us.
Not only is this not true as a substantive proposition—the lack of affordable health coverage simply had nothing to do with the spiraling unemployment rate and shrinking economy. It’s so at odds with what most Americans believed at the time—which is that health care was a diversion from the country’s economic problems rather than the solution to them—that it’s hard to see how suggesting the opposite will do anything other than anger voters all over again.
In fact, the argument put forth here isn’t even one the administration itself believed. As I report in my recent book on Obama and the economy, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had planned to refocus on jobs and the economy by September of 2009, but that became impossible because of the ongoing health care struggles. The year before, during the summer and fall of 2008, then-Senator Obama’s political advisers pleaded with him to let go of the health care issue, which polling suggested was a liability, but Obama insisted on sticking with it and personally came up with the rationale on display in the documentary. “Our big health care speech [shortly after Lehman Brothers collapsed] was the first to make the connection between these long-term problems and the economic issues,” one campaign aide told me. “[That] was all him.”
Strange, then, that the Obama re-election campaign would elevate an argument they had major reservations about, and which didn’t work very well the first time they aired it, to the center of their case for a second term.
In the end, it seems to reflect a gamble that most voters believe the economy is finally recovering, and won’t think too hard about the odd Obama decision that may have delayed the recovery. (At least in their minds; whether or not it actually delayed the recovery is harder to say than whether a lot of get-able voters believe it did.) In fact, the whole documentary is a bit of a gamble on that proposition—after all, the road we’ve traveled isn’t quite far enough if you think the economy is still lousy. This may be the right gamble for Team Obama. But you can’t help feeling there’s something slightly dissonant about the message at a time when the GDP numbers are still middling and unemployment is 8.3 percent. We have come a long way, no doubt. But whether we've come far enough is very much an open question.
Update: Added the parenthetical in the final paragraph.
Follow me on Twitter: @noamscheiber
17 comments
Interesting analysis. I look forward to seeing the video.
- floydsm8
March 16, 2012 at 1:50am
I thought the documentary worked well in establishing that the economy's problems were both acute and chronic, and that Obama tackled both problems: TARP, the stimulas, and the auto loans to help out acute problems, and health care and financial reform to help rebuild our economy for the longer term. Indeed the movie opens with Obama, facing the prospect of having to choose from among many emergent priorities, saying simply that we're going to have to do them all. This all seemed rather plainly laid out, so I did not have the same sense of dissonance that Noam describes with respect to having to choose between health care and jobs. What did strike me, on the other hand, was that the message of the video was largely backward looking, an attempt to justify (in my mind, fairly) many of the decisions of the first term. But I'm awaiting a second video that will presumably put forth a plan and vision for a second term. This documentary was only Chapter 1; Chapter 2 will certainly have to arrive around June or so, to waylay the attack dogs of a summer campaign season.
- junger47
March 16, 2012 at 4:37am
I thought the documentary worked well in establishing that the economy's problems were both acute and chronic, and that Obama tackled both problems: TARP, the stimulas, and the auto loans to help out acute problems, and health care and financial reform to help rebuild our economy for the longer term. Indeed the movie opens with Obama, facing the prospect of having to choose from among many emergent priorities, saying simply that we're going to have to do them all. This all seemed rather plainly laid out, so I did not have the same sense of dissonance that Noam describes with respect to having to choose between health care and jobs. What did strike me, on the other hand, was that the message of the video was largely backward looking, an attempt to justify (in my mind, fairly) many of the decisions of the first term. But I'm awaiting a second video that will presumably put forth a plan and vision for a second term. This documentary was only Chapter 1; Chapter 2 will certainly have to arrive around June or so, to waylay the attack dogs of a summer campaign season.
- junger47
March 16, 2012 at 4:37am
I think that most fair minded people, looking at the facts would have to give Obama good marks for his first term but he needs to be reelected to become fully the transformative figure many of us believe him capable to be.
- paskunac
March 16, 2012 at 6:36am
"the odd Obama decision that may have delayed the recovery": Why was it an "odd decision" to pursue health care reform? This was a centerpiece of his campaign, they had a limited and rare window of opportunity in which to pursue it, and Democrats had been building toward it for many years. If he had not pursue health care reform, liberals would have spent the last few years wringing their hands about what might have been. Also, how did health care reform delay recovery? Is there a plausible alternative set of events in which health care reform was dropped, they focused on jobs instead, and were able to get significant additional jobs initiatives through congress? I doubt it.
- kluhman
March 16, 2012 at 7:39am
The connection (between bin Laden and health care reform) is that killing one and addressing the other were necessary pre-conditions for solving the long-term problems of terrorism and rising public debt. I haven't seen the documentary but I asume the viewer is left on his own to make the connection, a connection that not even Scheiber makes (or doesn't express it in this post). As a literary device, it may be impressive; but as politics, not so much.
- rayward
March 16, 2012 at 8:11am
“He knew he couldn’t fix economy if he didn’t fix health care,” Hanks instructs us. Not only is this not true as a substantive proposition" It is true that health care currently appears to have nothing to do with any measure of the recovery. But we were being told many years ago that health care costs made a car more expensive to build in the United States than in Canada because health care was a significant part of the cost. Then we were told that health care was a major element of the budget that was not sustainable. The truth of the extent to which health care reform was an economic necessity may depend on what is meant by "fix the economy."
- Nusholtz
March 16, 2012 at 8:20am
The SAT and the LSAT were no fun for me, but I will revise my comment. If the American voter can be convinced that killing bin Laden and health care reform are alike, then the film may well be good politics. I suspect the (below) average voter believes that killing bin Laden brought us closer to winning the war against terrorism, but has difficulty accepting (or even understanding) the esoteric argument that health care reform brings us closer to solving the issue of a rising public debt. If the (below) average voter links the two, health care reform (Obama's most significant achievement and his most significant re-election obstacle) won't be the albatross it has been for Democrats the past two-three years, even if that (below) average voter doesn't know how to distinguish what's alike and what's different in the SAT.
- rayward
March 16, 2012 at 9:15am
I guess Noam thinks he's doing his job when he points out the intellectual soft spots in the Obama video, but I think, however accurate they might be, they are beside the point. It's akin to criticizing "MacBeth" for not being funny. The video is designed to inspire us, to elicit admiration for the quality of Obama's leadership and its results, and in this the video IMHO succeeds brilliantly. The poet e.e. cummings has a great quote that applies here: "who pays attention to the syntax of things/ will never wholly kiss you". Noam is about the syntax; the video is about the kiss.
- JackR
March 16, 2012 at 11:02am
That headline had me thinking the documentary features a surprise appearance from Christopher Hitchens. So disappointed.
- Shorpe
March 16, 2012 at 11:11am
Health care costs, starting with Medicare, are the biggest economic stone around America's neck. Obama and the Democrats were looking at a long-term reduction of real (inflation-adjusted) costs when they rammed through the Affordable Care Act over desperate GOP resistance. And even with a Republican minority in the House, no significant jobs bill could have been passed, especially given that southern Democrats are basically Republicans. The GOP is obsessed with making sure that Obama and the American people fail while he is president. Look at the heartless disdain with which they rejected the American Jobs Act, when millions of construction workers in the U.S. are dying to get back to work. "The Road We've Traveled" might have political flaws, but if the public is so dumb that it can't see that Republicans don't care about long-term health care prices (they actually love the huge profits in the industry) or employing Americans while corporations are making record profits, then we deserve what we get--an eventual Third World economy. The GOP blew up the road we've traveled, and they're still planting land mines on it. Any progress, however incremental, that Obama can make for the American people against ferocious Republican resistance is a triumph.
- magboy47.
March 16, 2012 at 11:41am
As others have suggested, the video is not aimed at people who will take a hard look at the intellectual basis for the arguments. It is aimed at voters. I have not seen it, but if it reached Noam on the emotional level, it sounds like it did the intended job. Health care needs to be fixed in the long term (actually not so long, just a decade or so) before it completely strangles the economy. It's not even a question of public vs. private costs. Obamacare doesn't deal with that part, although if it survives it might provide a framework for building a solution.
- JEFF FREY
March 16, 2012 at 11:45am
It's an effective doc and certainly pulls the heart strings but... Over 40% of all auto loans are now SUBPRIME with even looser criteria applied than before and most of these loans are being made by is Ally Financial, the former financing arm of General Motors that is “74 percent owned by the U.S. government." That's another subprime problem. The economy is not nearly as healthy as O'bama likes to think. “U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December…" Serious analysts are disputing the unemployment picture. Real incomes are still falling when adjusted for inflation. And the saved financial system? Wall Street Journal notes, current borrowing is “29 times capital…eerily reminiscent of levels seen before the crisis.” (“Stressed over stress tests for the Banks”, WSJ) There's also no correlation between GDP growth and the rocketing equity markets. Arguably QE and stock buybacks are driving the rise in prices. In short, O'bama needs to ratchet up the "We've got hard work ahead of us" and seriously tone down the "look how far we've come".
- IggyPop
March 16, 2012 at 2:13pm
Obama 2012
- ljb6599
March 16, 2012 at 4:19pm
The film brought out a more personal connection in the healthcare fight. Obama's mother, without health insurance, died of an untreated ovarian cancer. Limbaugh made fun of a young woman who was reporting that her friend lost her ovaries because her health insurance wouldn't cover treatment for an ovarian cyst. So maybe Obama didn't make the best political decisions, but he decided to do what he thought was right. Can his opponents say the same?
- BobElgin
March 16, 2012 at 5:54pm
Some of you people should take a closer look at the video. It's a decently crafted political statement, even if it feels like a PBS American Experience episode. (Which it does.) If you're wondering where Wall Street Reform is, it only appears in the face of the CFPB. Dodd-Frank is pretty arcane and, with lots of yet-unwritten rules, it's a half-loaf. Health care reform was high-wattage for a year, so even if you didn't like that movie, its astronomical production values and fanboy base gets it a slot in the documentary. (Yes. A "John Carter" reference.) And health care was about as well set-up as I'd want a three minute segment of a 17 minute video to be. They said this was three generations in the making. They showed that these costs have been out of control since the Nixon administration. And they put up the graph of death. It shows just how much health care inflation has outpaced regular inflation. It's only too bad the exchanges didn't come online this year (although they showed the pre-existing conditions and kids-till-26 parts), because comparing that with Ryancare (not sure if they included a mention of what Republicans' preferred health care reform) would have polled off the charts. It's the classic "X delivered on a lasting solution to a festering problem versus Y temporizes, panders, and tries to con you as he makes the problem worse". And going in to the general, Obama will have more than one opportunity to be X and paint Romney as Y. The classic example is as follows: Obama: auto bailout saved Detroit for a generation. Romney: lots of talk that ultimately would have led to economic devastation (and they deliver on this point in the documentary). That said, if you read Romney's "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed, it's pretty moderate and close to what Obama did. He just refused to step down from his conservative predilection for restructuring via private markets, and since he wasn't in office, he didn't get the chance to soul-search and go against his bias. And as he hit the cable news circuit, he didn't take much offence at the title, stressing that they needed to go through formal bankruptcy. Except that most people think bankruptcy means store-shuttering, layoffs, and death of the industrial heartland. It's too bad Romney knows too well the bankrupcy code and didn't write or speak for the popular audience who are justifiably terrified of bankruptcy.
- chaitless
March 17, 2012 at 12:06am
The documentary for President Obama's bid for a second time was a slick, Hollywood production and a great work of political propaganda. Tom Hanks' voice-over lent a inviting gravitas to the narrative. His was a gentler, more nuanced and softer voice-over than Clint Eastwood's in the ad for the Super Bowl, "Half Time in America." The visuals were quite precise and evocative of a man who knew the buck stopped at the Oval Office. There was a leitmotif within the visuals. President Obama was portrayed alone with the historical burden of his position even when he was among his cabinet members and at public functions. The video bleed into black and white through the narrative, as if one were leafing through a history book. I really liked that the establishing shots of Chicago. They were black and white. You could feel the coldness and how the city had come to a stand still in this winter blizzard.. It looked as if entire America had shut down realizing just how bad this economic crisis was so early in his term. And the freeze frame was arresting when this happened. And of course there was a skillful use of slow motion photography, especially during the last shot when the camera on a crane swooped up over the crowd while a person waved a large America flag on a pole. The director must have studied the camera movements from director Steve Spielberg. There was one photo showing President Obama with his back to the camera, surrounded by the enveloping darkness of the White House as he looked out of a large French window onto the lawn. The only light came from the window. Very iconic, fraught with emotions. I understand Noah's point of view and criticism of the actual historical record. But he is approaching this campaign video with the mind of a policy wonk and relating to other policy wonks who read TNR. I think the purpose, though, was to tug at the heart strings of a potential voter in the upcoming election. But it was a propaganda film. It was trying to get you to vote for President Obama. It wasn't a position paper from a think tank inside the Beltway.Noah is comparing apples and oranges in my opinion. He sees the trees but not the forest in his criticism.
- rewiredhogdog
March 17, 2012 at 7:30pm