Two Fine Documentaries
Ken A. Bode
April 30, 2009
As Ombudsman for CPB, a large portion of my time and attention goes to news, public affairs programming and documentaries. Generally, this reflects the proportion of viewer comments sent to me. Cultural and children's programs inspire very little critical mail.
In this posting I will share some thoughts about two documentaries that recently aired on PBS. Although the major commercial networks have all but abandoned documentary production, it remains a strong asset in public broadcasting, especially Frontline and This American Life.
Torturing Democracy is a 90-minute documentary that chronicles how the U.S. government was led to adopt a regimen that permitted the torture of prisoners detained in the war on terror. The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights has selected this program as the best domestic television documentary of 2008. The 90-minute documentary was produced by Emmy and Dupont award winner Sherry Jones in collaboration with the National Security Archive Project at George Washington University.
I have commented on this program once before, when PBS was unable to find a spot on the national schedule before the Bush Administration departed the White House in January. The issue of torture is much on the mind of the public today, though detention and interrogation policies were never really a part of the public dialogue in the lead-up to the election of 2008.
By early September of last year, when PBS offered no pre-election air date, Sherry Jones began to distribute Torturing Democracy to individual PBS stations. Eventually it aired on over 240 stations, albeit with the benefit of very little promotion.
Making the award, the RFK Center citation read: "Meticulous reporting unravels the inside story of how torture was adopted by the U.S. government as official policy in the aftermath of 9/11. With exclusive interviews, explosive documents and rare archival footage, the documentary has been called the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in American history."
Torturing Democracy continues to be broadcast around the country, and is especially timely today, though not as influential as it might have been if a place had been found on the national schedule before the election.
The second documentary, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, chronicles the life and career of the Republican operative who gets credit for inventing many of the negative campaign techniques of modern politics. The sub-headline of the film is, "From Rove To Reagan To The Bushes To McCain 2008, He Wrote The GOP Playbook."
Stefan Forbes directed and edited this documentary, which recently won the 2008 Polk Journalism Award.
The documentary follows Lee Atwater from his South Carolina beginnings to his days (with Karl Rove) in the trenches of the College Young Republicans, a schoolyard of bare-knuckle politics and dirty tricks. Atwater learned his trade in the South -- beginning as an aide to Sen. Strom Thurmond -- a place where race in its many guises is used as a wedge issue to discombobulate Democratic constituencies.
As a network political correspondent, I covered Lee Atwater along the entire route of this documentary from Thurmond to the 1980 Reagan for president campaign, to the Reagan White House, his management (under the watchful eye of George W. Bush) of the 1988 GOP presidential campaign, his brief stint as Republican National Chairman, and his losing battle with cancer. Atwater was a compelling and fascinating character who often seemed to possess an extra political gene.
Lee Atwater is best remembered for his management of the 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign during which he promised to "strip the bark off" the Democratic nominee, Gov. Michael Dukakis. His implement of choice was a convicted murderer and rapist, Willie Horton, who received a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison. Horton never returned, instead setting forth on a crime spree that fueled Atwater's message. Horton was black, his mug shots were scary and, while insisting that race had nothing to do with it, Atwater said he intended to make voters think that Willie Horton was Dukakis's running mate.
In one almost pathetic segment, Michael Dukakis is shown watching a replay of Atwater eviscerating his candidacy. The former Democratic candidate shakes his head and calmly says, "It was crazy not to defend myself."
At the time, Atwater vehemently insisted he was not a running a racist campaign, although as his life slipped away, he apologized to everyone involved including Willie Horton.
The underlying concept of Boogie Man is that Lee Atwater invented a political ethos that remains in place today. Think of the "Swiftboat" campaign against John Kerry and the rumors that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and not a U.S. citizen. Though the film does not dwell on this point, this is a questionable proposition. Lee Atwater's influence may have a ghostlike endurance, but there has never been anything like Willie Horton and the flag waving campaign of 1988.
Stefan Forbes assembled a vast amount of archival footage including some fascinating segments of Atwater playing a blues guitar, along with an excellent blues soundtrack. He also assembled a cast of commentators who truly knew Lee Atwater, including South Carolina politician Tom Turnipseed, the target of an early negative campaign, Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins, who said Atwater "had the eyes of a killer," and his longtime assistant, GOP operative Mary Matalin.
Boogie Man is a fascinating documentary, skillfully produced. For me, knowing Atwater made it especially interesting. The portrait that emerges of Lee Atwater is that of a man who rose to the top mostly by cutting more throats than his opponents. Roger Stone, Atwater's former partner in the political consulting game, assesses Boogie Man as a balanced portrait of Atwater's quest for power and celebrity. He was "a mastermind and a rogue, a genius and a charlatan, a visionary and a liar," Stone opines.
Roger Stone has it about right, and Stefan Forbes lays it all out in a fascinating, unnerving and ultimately heartbreaking portrait.
