Tue, October 12, 2004
Diary of a Political Tourist
Alexandra Pelosi's Diary of a Political Tourist premiered tonight on HBO. In many ways, it's a follow-up to Journeys with George, in which she tagged along with the president during his 2000 campaign. Unfortunately, the notoriety of its predecessor has made the film way too self-conscious, so the access is more restricted and the candidates are less spontaneous.
In the process of following the Democratic primaries, the film asks the entirely valid question: Why Kerry? Pelosi fields rough guesses as to why not Dean and why not Lieberman or Gephardt, but so – why Kerry? Default? At times she grazes what I always felt to be the heart of the matter: the media. TV news just didn't know how to handle Howard Dean. They couldn't work with him, and he wouldn't alter himself to sync with them. It was easy to cover him when he was a plucky outsider, a long-shot firebrand with grass-roots popular support. But once the serious stuff started (primary voters going to the polls), they couldn't handle the concept of him being successful. So, the "electability" issue was manufactured, and Kerry – who looked, dressed, acted, spoke, and thought like a politician – was branded "electable." Sure, Dean met them halfway. But TV news nailed the coffin shut.
That was the hardest part about watching Diary of a Political Tourist. Watching Dean crumble again. I've warmed to Kerry, and I respect his convictions and his stance on most issues. But he's not as energetic as Dean is, and he'll never be as passionate or forthright with us. Dean has an uncompromising commitment to changing politics-as-usual in this country, something he shares with a young Bill Clinton. Even in his early days, Clinton was still a slicker political animal, while Dean identifies more as a rabid outsider, but both share a devotion to challenging the staid and counterproductive structure of the political machine. Once again I shared in the heartbreak of the young Dean supporters as he announced his departure from the race. He represented such a strong hope for change. In the end, his passion, innovation, and idealism most likely defeated him, but for a time they represented a bold optimism for a brilliant and prosperous future: an America that was smart enough to constantly make itself better. A better home for its own people, a better world citizen, a nation with a long-term view and a sense of responsibility. Best of all, Dean didn't seem to have any other objectives. He wasn't in it for personal glory or politics, he just wanted to change things, fix things, and keep on working.
We don't see enough of Dean in the film – I'd love to get a real sense of his honest reaction to each step in the process and his best guess at why the campaign didn't go the distance – this is partly due to the candidates' teams restricting access, and partly because Pelosi has too many candidates to cover. We spend no time at all with Kucinich, Sharpton, or Carol Moseley-Braun. In contrast to Journeys with George, which had a real story and an in-depth feel, Diary of a Political Tourist feels like just that: a series of postcards from the road, quick sketches with little real substance. The point of each seems to be: "What a circus! Look at the media! The staged photo-ops!" It's always good for the public to see how much goes on behind the scenes of a campaign, and what things are like before the media chops up reality into quickie sound bites, but over an hour and a half it begins to stretch thin.
For me, it's hard to trust Pelosi entirely as our guide. The affable everygirl quality that played well in Journeys with George – flirting with "Newsweek" Guy, etc. – is less evident now, because she's no longer carrying the camera for fun, she's making a movie. And she's hardly an everygirl: she's worked as a segment producer at NBC and her mom is the Minority Leader of the House. In a way, she's a part of the machine – if she weren't, she'd never have the access she has. (She worked at Dateline, which is reason enough to be suspicious.) She's cute (staking out John Kerry's Boston brownstone with a couple of TV reporters, she sings an impromptu "Stakeout" song to the tune of Astronaut Jones's "Destination Moon") and she has a friendly way of asking tough questions, but she plays very soft with the candidates. Most of her time is spent shouting "look how far you've come" at Kerry, providing an already obvious context for his meandering progress through the run-up to the primaries and his success afterwards. She rarely asks a question that can't be answered with a lame one-liner as the candidate breezes past. It's somewhat telling that most of her Kerry footage is just the candidate waving gently at her from a distance. At least she has TV news personalities on camera taking some of the blame. CNN's Candy Crowley sheepishly ponders the fact that the course of the race is determined as much by the press coverage as it is by the candidates or the voters. (And by the way, CNN, thanks!) There's a gentle, all-too-forgiving rebuke of the media's heavy-handed manipulation of the news to suit their needs, and the pack mentality is featured front and center (although it's more bitingly exposed inadvertently – at the Boston stakeout, the CNN and NBC reporters can't even watch the front of Kerry's house separately), but if Pelosi really wants to cast herself as the ordinary American's guide to the complex political process, she needs to take the role at least a little more seriously.
© onebee · all rights reserved
Joe Mulder — Tue, 10/12/04 11:28am
I have to say, I agree with almost everything; I could have pretty much written this review myself.
The one thing I saw that I hadn't seen before, which I'm surprised I didn't, was the fervor with which Dean's young supporters took up the cause; I mean, I saw the fervor before, but, I didn't recognize it.
It's religious fervor. As someone who went to plenty of Christian youth stuff as a teenager (mostly just because Mandy Swanson was going, but, still), I've seen this exact look on young people's faces; this is a whipped-into-a-frenzy-by-mob-ecstasy look that I'm fairly familiar with.
And this isn't an attack on Dean; I liked Dean a lot, even if I didn't necessarily agree with is politics. For a long time, I've wanted to see a politician with the sort of attitude and candor Dean displayed.
But, to repeat my old line (oft-quoted by noted Massachusetts liberal Matt Mulder, if I may toot my own horn) that I used to use about teen religious gatherings, "if you did it right, you could get kids that excited about Chevy trucks."
This is not an indictment of the Christian rallies I used to attend, mind you; I didn't really dig them personally, but, it was a good jumping off point to get kids excited about religion. For most of them it wouldn't stick, and that's fine. For some of them it would, and that's great.
And, I think, in the same way, a few of those kids who got so excited for Dean (most of them were likely getting involved in their first presidential election) will stay interested in politics, and that's great.
But, yeah. I hadn't put my finger on that before, but, that's what accounted for a large part of the Dean support, I think. During a time in which religion is for silly hicks in the flyover states, kids found something to believe in for a little while.
[note: seriously, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. And, I'm not putting our kind reviewer in the "religious fervor" category; I'm pretty sure he just actually, genuinely liked Dean. Which is cool]