Obama today: Documentary travels road to White House

Fast forward to Election Day, when Obama loomed large as a beacon of hope for a newly enchanted generation. As the ballots rolled in and Grant Park crackled with an electric euphoria, Cho called his mother, crumpled into a chair and wept uncontrollably.

"By the People," which screens Friday at Chicago's Cadillac Theater before premiering Tuesday on HBO, captures Obama's meteoric rise to the presidency through the previously unseen vantage point of the campaign staffers whose sweat and tears helped get him there.

But a year after Obama's historic election, the mood has sobered.

Political partisanship remains the rule in Washington, and some of Obama's greatest supporters complain that promises of change remain unfulfilled. Amid fights about health care reform and an unemployment rate pushing 10 percent, Obama's job approval rating slid nine points between the second and third quarters of the year, to 53 percent in October--one of the biggest quarter drops in the first year of an elected president, according to Gallup, and a steady decline from the 68 percent approval he enjoyed just after the inauguration.

For filmmaker Alicia Sams, the documentary is coming at the right time.

"What I hope happens is that people see it and remember how engaged they were," said Sams, 45, who lives in Oak Park. "It's not enough to grumble. You have to speak up."

Sams and her collaborator, 33-year-old Amy Rice of New York, both independent filmmakers, started following Obama nine months before he declared his run for president. They had unique access to Obama, his family and key campaign staffers as they celebrated the thrill of their first victory in Iowa and slogged through the draining battles that followed. Among the intimate moments captured are Michelle Obama at home playing with the kids, her husband blanking as he prepares for a debate, chief strategist David Axelrod confessing primary angst at Chicago's Manny's Deli, and young speech writer Jon Favreau tweaking the iconic words Obama would later deliver to thousands of supporters.

Actor Ed Norton, whose company produced the film, said the premise was that Obama's candidacy would be "a prism through which the country would reveal itself," with the film ultimately trying to answer the question: Is America ready to elect a black president?

It turned out it was. But a year later, is America happy with how he's doing?

"The campaign was so full of energy, and then all of a sudden, it's like watching paint dry," said Davie Decoursey-James, an Obama supporter who lives in Bronzeville. Decoursey-James, 45, said he'll wait to assess until halfway into the presidency.

"I won't allow myself to be disappointed because I just don't think there's been enough time yet," he said.

Hyde Park resident Joseph Dozier, 22, thinks there's plenty to be disappointed about already, including failure to act on gay rights and privacy rights.

Dozier, president of the University Republicans at the University of Chicago, voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the election, but said he was "very happy" about Obama's victory and hoped he'd live up to his campaign rhetoric. Instead, Dozier said, "the Obama administration has tried to bite off too much, too soon," and its policies don't look much different from that of former President George W. Bush.

For many Obama supporters, the high may have subsided, but the hope has not.
"I still am a strong believer that he is going to do the right thing," said Lupe Jimenez, 27, of Clearing. "I think it's just going to take some time for us to get there."

Nikki Snodgrass, 28, who was in the ecstatic crowd at Grant Park on election night, said that while Obama's promised changes are "kind of slow-going," that's to be expected given the obstacles on his plate and the nature of governing.

Still, she said, Obama hasn't lived up to all her expectations. Her biggest letdown was when Obama said he wanted to "move forward" rather than demand accountability in response to the memos he released detailing CIA torture.

"That really bothered me," said Snodgrass, who lives in Lincoln Square. "He always seemed to be such a humanitarian."

Some people revved up during the campaign have lost interest.

Adam Wolf of Uptown said Obama's campaign got him more involved than he'd ever been before--but now that it's no longer in his face, Wolf, 26, said he's been paying less attention, as his life is busy enough holding down four jobs.

One of those jobs is as founder of Waggish Apparel, maker of funny T-shirts for dogs and their owners, which in its own way reflects the dampened passion about Obama. As press about Obama turned negative, Wolf said, he avoided featuring the "Bark Obama" and "All Barack, No Bite" T-shirts at marketing events.

The drop in popularity hasn't discouraged Cho, the campaign field organizer, who said he still feels Obama can unite the country in ways no other politician has or could.

"We've been here before, we've been the underdog," said Cho, now 26 and working as associate director of legislative affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. "I don't feel any less confident than I did a year ago."

Obama doc not all you'd imagine
By Matt Pais
Metromix

"By the People" (NR)
2 stars

Did you know that Barack Obama is a charismatic guy? And that a lot of people like and support him?

You can learn all of this and more in "By the People," an affectionate documentary about Obama's historic campaign that teaches, well, not much of anything. The film does offer excellent access to the big man based on the South Side, spending a lot of time with him along the campaign trail. It just provides no insight about the struggles he faced or the reasons so many people were excited by Obama and volunteered to help.

The message is merely that people wanted to see him take the lead because, you know, he's a born leader. (There is, however, a funny scene of a 9-year-old volunteer doing a pretty impressive job on a cold-call, with his professional demeanor fully contradicted by funny, frustrated facial expressions.) As you might expect, the Obamas come off as a very likable, laid-back, relatable family, but any strain felt from the election process is mostly glossed over.

It's disappointing to get only a surface-level look at a monumental election, but the movie does at least provide this hilarious nugget from Chris Matthews, responding to Obama's win in the very, very preliminary Iowa caucus: "For [Hillary] Clinton, what was once considered inevitable now seems barely likely."

How quickly the political tide turns.