An Inconvenient Truth for the Obama Campaign Video

[Valin]

Ricochet: Jonathan Horn

3/19/12

 

At The Washington Post this morning, fact checker Glenn Kessler asks whether the Obama campaign film, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” makes a wrong turn in recounting the story of how the President’s mother struggled to obtain health coverage during her cancer treatment. A thousand words later, Kessler reaches his verdict – “three Pinocchios” for including the story, which a biographer had previously debunked.

 

It is hardly newsworthy that a campaign film would take liberties with the truth and even less so because this movie comes from director Davis Guggenheim of “An Inconvenient Truth” fame. In any documentary, the producers wield tremendous power because they can choose the moments worth documenting and weave them into any narrative they please.

 

What distinguishes “The Road We’ve Traveled” from other recent works is the audacity with which it changes history, and not in the good way. Far from hiding these revisions, the movie carelessly flaunts them with images and sound bites undermining its heroic narrative of a young president rising to meet his moment.

 

(Snip)

 

“The Road We’ve Traveled,”