video

I was watching “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama” (available on HBO On Demand), and I noticed one of those funnier-in-hindsight moments that pop up sometimes.  This documentary reveals much of the artifice involved in any political campaign, but on the heels of Sarah Palin‘s much-hyped “Handgate” gaffe, there’s a neat pre-echo of that incident during a debate prep sequence. I think it underscores the silliness of the media’s newfound obsession with “optics,” and their misunderstanding of them.

Imagine, if you will, that you happened to be one of the many people (many in 2004 numbers anyway) watching the 2004 Democratic Convention. You happen to catch then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama’s roof-raising, career-making (to put it mildly!) speech and you decide, wow this is a guy going places. I should get a [...]

I can’t say I started crying during the opening credits of the upcoming HBO documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, but only because I got to the theater five minutes late. The film — which will air on November 3 on HBO — begins in Iowa in 2007, eight months before the caucuses and light years before today, and spends nearly half of its two-hours focusing on the state and the young supporters populating its campaign headquarters.