TV Review: By The People: The Election of Barack Obama

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By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (2009)–***

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama has the least amount of political analysis of any political documentary that I’ve seen. That’s not to say it’s lacking substance, but in telling the story of Barack Obama’s historic election, you realize that not much reflection on style or cunning is needed. It’s a story so simple that the title sums it up. This election wouldn’t have happened without the dedicated millions who stood up for one man and his vision of America.

By the People opens up on then-Sen. Barack Obama doing media interviews on the evening of the 2006 mid-term elections. He’s already getting the question: Will he run for president? On Feb. 10, 2007, we found out the answer was “yes.”

The first 45 minutes follow the Obama campaign staff and the hundreds of volunteers working to get Iowans to know the man they believe in. While David Axelrod and David Plouffe get screen time, as does Obama, much of the time is spent introducing lesser-knowns of the campaign like Ronnie Cho.

To understand Obama’s election you really have to see people like Cho in action. Cho and many others are making phone calls and introducing Obama to Iowa, but they can’t really describe Obama without the man on the ground. They know that people need to see him, need to hear him. When Iowans finally meet Obama, they too begin to see that Cho is working toward something great, something that hadn’t then, and still hasn’t, fully manifested itself. The momentum shifts, but even after an Iowa win, we, as well as the campaign, know that this will be a long fight.

Full disclosure time: I wanted Barack Obama to be president when I saw him on television giving his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. While watching By the People, tears welled up in my eyes more than once. Watching Cho cry on the phone to his mother when Obama takes Iowa and seeing the campaign celebrate when they win the presidency are personal moments for anyone who supported Obama. And that’s also the one flaw in the documentary.

By the People isn’t The Control Room or …So Goes the Nation, much like Obama isn’t Clinton or Bush. There isn’t a sharp focus on political masterminds engineering the communication strategy for a candidate. There isn’t heavy analysis of one state that swung an election. The criticisms that can be, and likely will be, leveled against this documentary are the same ones that anyone were leveled at Obama. Obama can’t be that great. His staff isn’t that patient, even wholesome. It’s all fluff, right? The cynic in me still doesn’t know if I should believe–but I want to.

By the People isn’t just about Barack Obama’s election, though. It shows us what happens when we, the people, take a stand for something. One older Super Tuesday voter, while waiting in what is likely the longest line to vote in his lifetime, says it best: “Can you imagine if 85 percent of the people voted every election? You couldn’t get these bums in there.” While I doubt that a figure as exciting as Obama will ever come again in my lifetime, the documentary leaves me feeling that something exciting could happen in every election if we all voted. Call it naive, but remember, that’s also what people said when me and millions of others started supporting Barack Obama.

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sims, premieres Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 9 p.m. on HBO.