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"\n\nWe'll probably never know just what mysterious weird-sister beckonings impelled Congressman Paul Ryan to do a teaser ad for the budget plan House Republicans will unveil next week. (Uh-huh, teaser ad: \"The Path to Prosperity,\" the end card sez, \"Coming Soon.\" All that's missing is who will star in it, but the 99 percent can bet it won't be them.) Still, Ryan couldn't have guessed how his Last Year at Marienbad stroll through a deserted Congress's halls would be one-upped by the debut of the Obama re-election campaign's 17-minute Davis Guggenheim minidoc, The Road We've Traveled.\n\nBoth aim for the same note of sober reckoning. But reassurance-wise, where Obama's ad has it all over Ryan's is pretty basic: The president appears to have regular contact with other people from whose advice he profits. Not so the House Budget Committee chairman, apparently the last man striding in a sepulchral Capitol from which all other sentient life had been blasted by demonic gamma rays. As he unnerves the retreating camera with firm talk about America's debt crisis, you keep waiting for the guy to freeze in panic, grab the lens with both hands\u2014stop backing away from me, you fool!\u2014and scream \"Is anybody out there? Can anyone hear me?\" Or else, maybe, for Leo and Kate to burst from the corridor's far end in a flood of icy water and shove Ryan aside to get to the boat deck.\n\n\n\nAside from his Mr. Responsible boilerplate about acting for \"our children's future\"\u2014in his shoes, I'd take up mime instead\u2014Ryan's preview isn't exactly generous with specifics, which is not The Road We've Traveled's problem. Totting up Obama's achievements in the teeth of 2008's economic disaster (saving Detroit, check; killing bin Laden, check; closing Gitmo\u2014um, never mind), it's peddling steadfastness, not the audacity of hope. And, of course, pretending that steadfastness is the agreed-on national narrative of Obama's presidency, as opposed to one that no Republican (and not every Democrat) would assent to. Only a few clips of anti-Obamacare protesters remind us It Hasn't Been Easy.\n\nEven so, it was shrewd of Guggenheim to recognize that soaring inspirationalism wasn't going to cut it even with the party faithful this time around. The problem is that not much binds the doc's litany of Obama's accomplishments except the theme of resolve; because invoking ideology is a no-no, it doesn't make a case that all this came out of a consistent world-view\u2014not just one voters could reject, but one they could share. And interestingly, Guggenheim doesn't even try to humanize Obama\u2014that is, alleviate the sense of remoteness that even his supporters are conscious of, despite four years of familiarity with him. So far as anyone can tell, he saves his warm-and-fuzzy side for his children, who certainly deserve the bulk of it. Just maybe not a monopoly, since one reason we re-elect presidents is that we've gotten to feel cozy with them."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/yay-campaign-propaganda-reviewing-the-obama-doc-and-paul-ryans-teaser-trailer>