RUTHFULLY YOURS

The speeches yesterday provided plenty of rousing, feel-good moments. But to my mind the most important event of the day was something whose effect was sobering if not devastating. I mean the private screening of Stephen Bannon’s new movie The Hope and the Change ^[5]. Bannon has assembled an eloquent and moving collage of 40 Democrats and independents from different backgrounds all across the country. All voted for Barack Obama in 2008. All give voice to their frustration, disillusionment, and sense of betrayal at the hands of a man who came promising “hope an change” but delivered a fiscally incontinent governmental leviathan that has impoverished America.

The Hope and the Change is a brilliant piece of cinematic story telling. It begins with the wild and weepy enthusiasm that greeted Obama in 2008 and moves slowly through the effects of his efforts to “fundamentally transform ^[6]the United States of America.” Pat Caddell, the Democratic polling whiz who helped Jimmy Carter to victory in 1976, helped assemble the cast. Although he is a lifelong Democrat, he understands the destructive nature of Obama’s tenure, and he was on hand to praise the film and point out that its portraits of everyday suffering and disillusionment might well prove to be the Obama’s administration’s “biggest nightmare.”