This celebrated documentary provides a bird's eye view into the inner sanctum of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus spent three weeks shot 33 hours of film, which was later combined with news footage to capture the cause-and-effect relationship between what happened inside "The War Room" and the election of the president. There is no voice over narration to this documentary, just clips spliced together. The dynamic behind it all is the Fire and Ice duo of chief Clinton strategist James Carville and director of communications George Stephanopoulos. Of course, both titles are gross simplifications of their roles in the campaign, and it is impossible not to see "The War Room" as being one of the inspirations for "The West Wing."
What stands out in watching this documentary is the complete sense that this is what it was really like, which, in the end, is more impressive than the fact that these guys won the election. Here you get to see the infamous Clinton "quick response" strategy at work, where every attack by the opponent is crushed in an immediate barrage of rhetoric. For me the most memorable sequences were when the Clinton brain trust discover the Bush-Quayle campaign is having its campaign signs printed in Brazil rather than in the U.S., Carville becomes emotional in the final staff meeting of the Clinton War Room, and when he and Stephanopoulos find themselves unsure as to how they are supposed to address the man who is now the president-elect.
From the perspective of today it is interesting to compare the Carville and Stephanopoulos we see behind closed doors with their more public personas as talking heads. The Jim and Mary (Matlin) traveling road show that keeps Carville in the political spotlight today might get more of the publicity, but the one who has impressed me the most is Stephanopoulos, whose work on the Sunday morning political roundtable "This Week" established his reputation as one of the most objective and restrained political analysts on the tube of either party affiliation. That assessment was codified this past year when Stephanopoulos replaced Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts as the hosts of the show. "The War Room" shows not only where he paid his dues, but gives him his bone fides as well.
The final irony is that the one clip showing Al Gore giving a campaign speech is more dynamic than anything we saw during the 2000 election.
