Our Brand Is Crisis: Political Entertainment, Political Disaster

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on October 13, 2006.

As I write this, the United States has less than four weeks until its mid-term elections. Voters around the country shall decide whether Republicans maintain control of the U.S. Congress or lose said control to the Democrats. I must admit that I am interested in the outcome of this election, not because I expect that it will produce any significant material difference, but because it makes for good theater. For all the rhetoric about Big Issues, elections are nothing more than an entertaining gloss over individuals' and groups' struggles for power. If U.S. citizens (or citizens of any country, for that matter) insist on trying to grab more money and perks at the expense of their fellow taxpayers, then the process at least should be amusing. (We need more scandal, not less.)

Of course, as the United States and other industrialized countries continue in their quest to build cultures that are completely saturated with entertainment, politicians have to keep abreast of what will maintain the interest of the masses. Enter the political consultant, perhaps the most important figure on any candidate's payroll, the marketing wiz who measures success not by a monetary bottom line but by poll numbers and ballots cast. Propagandists are, of course, nothing new; however, the formal job title of "political consultant" may be a recent phenomenon. James Carville, of course, popularized the notion of political consulting when he worked on Bill Clinton's first campaign, while Karl Rove fulfills that role for George W. Bush.

While we may have grown accustomed to hearing about American candidates' advisors/groomers, we are probably less aware of the exportation of such services. Perhaps nothing exemplifies the dominance of the service and information sectors of the U.S. economy more than the fact that we can export something as ephemeral and superficial as political consulting. This odd fact is the subject of Rachel Boynton's Our Brand Is Crisis (2005), a documentary about the 2002 election of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (a.k.a., "Goni") to the presidency of Bolivia, how the American consulting firm of Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) aided in that outcome, and why things turned so horribly wrong afterwards.

Boynton's point in the film is clear: while the consultants may have been convinced that they were "doing good," that they were aiding the right candidate, they ultimately failed to understand conditions on the ground. GCS (particularly Jeremy Rosner, the consultant with the most exposure in the film) was convinced that Goni was part of the cadre of center-left, "Third Way" political elites that emerged around the world in the 1990's: those who believed that the market was ultimately the driving force behind social and political advancement but who were not slavishly devoted to laissez faire economics. If GCS could convince the Bolivian electorate that Goni was the right man for the job, if they could convince voters that he wasn't as arrogant as he seemed—a hard task since the documentary made it clear that he was an arrogant figure (e.g., he publicly equated political protestors with tantrum-throwing children)—then they would have done the world some good (and made some money along the way).

While all of the work that GCS put into crafting the "right" image for their client would serve them well on Election Day (a razor-thin plurality of Bolivian voters cast their ballots for Goni), their ultimate success would be short-lived. When not forced to travel around the country as a candidate, playing "meet and greet" with the impoverished Bolivian peasants that he looked down on, Goni proved himself a cold, aloof man with little political acumen. On his watch, Bolivia descended into a political disaster that was precipitated by controversies over the role of multinational corporations in the country's natural gas sector (regarded by many Bolivians as a "national" resource). Goni's approval plummeted through the floor, violent protests erupted throughout the country, and he was forced into exile in 2003 (he now lives outside Washington, DC).

While Our Brand Is Crisis takes places almost completely in Bolivia, it ultimately serves as an examination of the drawbacks and shortsightedness of American political culture. By all accounts, the consultants of GCS were intelligent, well-educated professionals who tried to understand as well as they could (given the fact that they were not experts in Latin America) the dynamics of Bolivian politics. Unfortunately, they simply lacked the historical and cultural awareness that might have helped them to see the storm clouds gathering just over the horizon, the deep-seated social dynamics that might have indicated that their client really didn't know what he was getting himself into.

While elections are nothing more than entertainment, the material consequences of political conflict are anything but entertaining. Implicitly, perhaps unconsciously, the consultants of GCS thought that by exporting American-style political marketing to a developing country and creating the right image for their client, they somehow could transform the material reality of Bolivia itself — as though a well-crafted marketing campaign was all that the country needed. Granted, the elections-as-entertainment model may work well for industrialized countries, which are rich enough to overcome (or at least ignore) the fluff and foibles of their elected leaders. However, in poor, socially polarized countries, the election façade can work for only so long before material hardship kicks in, a hardship that may foment real political strife.

At the end of the film, Jeremy Rosner acknowledges that as an outsider, he missed some major cues about the deeply entrenched political views of the Bolivian electorate. However, he also should have noted that perhaps U.S.-style political marketing is not a moral course of action in poor, socially divided countries — that consultants like him should eschew such "opportunities." Unfortunately, he doesn't say that — which leads me to believe that he didn't learn the most important lesson from his client's disaster.