Many documentary filmmakers and reporters dream of getting White House access to take a fly-on-the-wall have a look at the inner workings of an administration.
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker John Maggio and Latest York Times reporter David Sanger should have thought they hit a jackpot after they got approval to film “Yr One: A Political Odyssey,” an HBO documentary on President Biden’s first 12 months in office that airs Wednesday at 9 p.m.
They curiously selected to focus only on the challenges facing the brand new administration on COVID-19 and national security. The administration’s economic record, which has featured the best inflation in 40 years, the tip of US energy independence and controversial giveaways like college-loan forgiveness, is totally ignored. The one outside critic who escapes the cutting-room floor is Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who materializes on screen with a single quotation on Biden’s politics of distraction.
I even have little question that Maggio and Sanger were hoping to inform a hit story. What they got was a window on the hubris and cluelessness of many within the Biden orbit as they careened from a rocky vaccine-distribution plan to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan to the buildup to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Given those first-year distractions, it’s no surprise that neither Biden nor his tongue-challenged Vice President Kamala Harris thought it clever to take a seat for an interview with the filmmakers.
But a number of Biden supporting players show up on camera. They are sometimes candid. Secretary of State Tony Blinken (who went to varsity with Sanger) admits to only how surprised the White House was by the collapse of the Afghan regime. “President Ashraf Ghani said to me on the phone, ‘I’ll stay and fight to the death,’ ” Blinken remembers. “He fled the country the subsequent day.”
“It became clear that we were going to be coping with much higher case counts than we thought,” recalls Andy Slavic, a top official on the COVID-19 team who witnessed its overconfidence melt away. Other players, including White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and climate czar John Kerry, keep on with party-line platitudes. As he got deeper into filming “Yr One,” Maggio admits that “by the tip of the summer, it just felt just like the wheels were coming off. . . . Suddenly they became the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”
But he thinks some stabilization comes with the Ukraine crisis, the segment where “Yr One” provides its most insightful moments. CIA Director William Burns is shipped on a secret mission to Moscow to personally warn Putin of the implications of aggressive motion. “I discovered Putin unapologetic. His appetite for risk had grown,” he tells Maggio. Biden begins assembling US allies in a coalition, skillfully enough for the film to argue that the Biden team learned something from its Afghan debacle. “That was form of their saving grace for ‘Yr One,’ ” Maggio claims.
Due to Biden’s lack of participation within the film he only appears in archival footage. That offers the impression he was off stage during many of the dramatic moments of his first 12 months in office. Indeed, that could be closer to the actual truth, the more evidence piles up of Biden’s growing detachment from much of his own administration.
Quick documentaries almost all the time suffer from looking rushed and incomplete. But “Yr One” has enough insight and behind-the-scenes intimacy to form an image of Team Biden during its rocky first 12 months.
Call these people “The Not So Best and Brightest,” a bunch of high achievers completely convinced of their good intentions and largely unaware of the constraints that quality places on actually getting good results.
Many documentary filmmakers and reporters dream of getting White House access to take a fly-on-the-wall have a look at the inner workings of an administration.
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker John Maggio and Latest York Times reporter David Sanger should have thought they hit a jackpot after they got approval to film “Yr One: A Political Odyssey,” an HBO documentary on President Biden’s first 12 months in office that airs Wednesday at 9 p.m.
They curiously selected to focus only on the challenges facing the brand new administration on COVID-19 and national security. The administration’s economic record, which has featured the best inflation in 40 years, the tip of US energy independence and controversial giveaways like college-loan forgiveness, is totally ignored. The one outside critic who escapes the cutting-room floor is Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who materializes on screen with a single quotation on Biden’s politics of distraction.
I even have little question that Maggio and Sanger were hoping to inform a hit story. What they got was a window on the hubris and cluelessness of many within the Biden orbit as they careened from a rocky vaccine-distribution plan to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan to the buildup to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Given those first-year distractions, it’s no surprise that neither Biden nor his tongue-challenged Vice President Kamala Harris thought it clever to take a seat for an interview with the filmmakers.
But a number of Biden supporting players show up on camera. They are sometimes candid. Secretary of State Tony Blinken (who went to varsity with Sanger) admits to only how surprised the White House was by the collapse of the Afghan regime. “President Ashraf Ghani said to me on the phone, ‘I’ll stay and fight to the death,’ ” Blinken remembers. “He fled the country the subsequent day.”
“It became clear that we were going to be coping with much higher case counts than we thought,” recalls Andy Slavic, a top official on the COVID-19 team who witnessed its overconfidence melt away. Other players, including White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and climate czar John Kerry, keep on with party-line platitudes. As he got deeper into filming “Yr One,” Maggio admits that “by the tip of the summer, it just felt just like the wheels were coming off. . . . Suddenly they became the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”
But he thinks some stabilization comes with the Ukraine crisis, the segment where “Yr One” provides its most insightful moments. CIA Director William Burns is shipped on a secret mission to Moscow to personally warn Putin of the implications of aggressive motion. “I discovered Putin unapologetic. His appetite for risk had grown,” he tells Maggio. Biden begins assembling US allies in a coalition, skillfully enough for the film to argue that the Biden team learned something from its Afghan debacle. “That was form of their saving grace for ‘Yr One,’ ” Maggio claims.
Due to Biden’s lack of participation within the film he only appears in archival footage. That offers the impression he was off stage during many of the dramatic moments of his first 12 months in office. Indeed, that could be closer to the actual truth, the more evidence piles up of Biden’s growing detachment from much of his own administration.
Quick documentaries almost all the time suffer from looking rushed and incomplete. But “Yr One” has enough insight and behind-the-scenes intimacy to form an image of Team Biden during its rocky first 12 months.
Call these people “The Not So Best and Brightest,” a bunch of high achievers completely convinced of their good intentions and largely unaware of the constraints that quality places on actually getting good results.
