(HOST) This year’s rough-and-tumble White House political campaign reminds filmmaker, teacher, and commentator Jay Craven of a penetrating documentary film he recently saw on DVD.
(CRAVEN) The film is Rachel Boynton’s "Our Brand Is Crisis". It tells the behind-the-scenes story of the 2002 Presidential elections in Bolivia. The immensely unpopular former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was shoe-horned back into office, thanks to the highly paid U.S. political consulting firm, GCS, led by Democratic Party heavyweights James Carville, Stan Greenberg, Robert Shrum, and Jeremy Rosner. Their shared client list includes Kerry, Gore, Mondale, Kennedy, and both Clintons.
Boynton shows us the consultants’ intensive back-room maneuverings in chilling detail. Anyone who thinks that bare-knuckles tactics are exclusive to the Swift Boaters or Republican maestro Karl Rove need only watch this film to see how Democratic Party strongmen Carville and company also use smear tactics, attack ads, whispering campaigns, and dirty tricks to destroy their opponents.
They spread rumors that one candidate was gay and another a closet fascist. But, as their centerpiece, the consultants worked to create a sense of national crisis – and fear, especially the fear of economic collapse, to pressure voters to bring back experienced American-born former President Sanchez de Lozada whom they portrayed as the only candidate able to lead them out of their catastrophe. The consultants’ message was – quote – "the frame for us is crisis, we must own crisis, it’s a message we can bet the house on."
Millionaire mine owner Sanchez de Lozada was widely viewed as a pawn of big business who had sold out Bolivian resources to foreign interests during his previous presidency. Indeed, consultant Jeremy Rosner looks straight at his candidate and bluntly reminds him: quote – "for about 55 per cent of the voters, the only question is how high the gallows should be."
In the face of this steep voter resistance, the near-manic Carville and associates barely squeaked their man back into office. They believed in their candidate but managed their victory by manufacturing a media fantasy that rendered false positives for him and false negatives for his two opponents. This resulted in an unsettling false victory that neither carried an authentic mandate nor addressed the country’s challenges. Within months, a real crisis set in – Bolivians revolted, scores were killed in the streets and President Sanchez de Lozada fled into exile in Virginia.
We live in a democracy that is older and more stable than Bolivia’s, but we, too, are susceptible to media campaigns and subliminal messages that play on our fears or evoke a sense of crisis, in which we’re asked to hand over authority and submit to our worst nightmares instead of acting on our faith in a hopeful future that depends on us and our neighbors.
Viewing this film reminded me that voters motivated by fear will limit the risks they’re willing to take. But real progress requires risk, and if we want to move forward we must maintain a belief in what is possible, in the common good, and in the importance of honest choice.