By the People: The Election of Barack Obama

This is a behind-the-scene of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign. It starts with him watching the mid-term election in 2006. He would announce a few months later. This follows the campaign all the way to the night of victory.

This is in the same vein as the great documentary "The War Room (1993)" which followed Bill Clinton's campaign. It is inferior in a couple of ways. It's been done before. It's now more or less a historical document at this point. I would have loved one for W. The other problem is the limited drama.

This one follows more with people further down the food chain. "The War Room" followed James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. They were great characters near the top of the food chain. This one is a lot of (to quote Palin) Hopey Changey thing. It follows organizer Ronnie Cho who is representative of the ground troops. The upper level stuff is never quite so compelling. It feels like we're just outside of the war room. It might also be Obama's calm persona injecting into his campaign or that everybody is tapping away at their Blackberry. This is a nice recount of the campaign. I can't help but wonder if Hilary's campaign has a more compelling behind-the-scenes movie.