The Carville & Stephanopoulos Show
This week I went back down memory road to relive the 1992 election by watching The War Room (1993) about the first Clinton Presidential campaign.
I was a freshman at UConn fall of 2001 and as a political science major one of the first classes periods I had in college showed us this documentary. The film had been out in the world for 8 years before that time and I felt like I had watched a lot of movies at that point but I had never heard of The War Room or any other kind of documentary that was behind the scenes of a presidential campaign.
It was like seeing animals in their natural environment for the first time to see Carville & Stephanopoulos shooting the shit in plain clothes. Eleven years later I worked in a similar environment as depicted in The War Room with the Arizona Democratic Party and it certainly was a different demographic than in the documentary, a lot younger, and a lot more people of all walks of life. It definitely wasn't the same kind of operation but it had the same level of enthusiasm to work hard toward a cause. For me, it was to make sure voters weren't given a hard time getting to the ballot.
The War Room almost holds up as a documentary. I think if it was made now, it would be several one hour parts and not feature length. I felt as though there was a LOT from that election that wasn't documented here and the whole process but it is a fine snapshot of one of the odder presidential elections... or the first truly odd election in a series of several in the last 24 years.
