There’s nothing deep or brand new, but lots of great fly-on-the-wall glimpses: a smooth Stephanopoulos on the phone knocking down another lurid sex story (“Nobody will believe you and people will think you’re scummy”), a cackling Carville trying–and failing–to plant a negative story with CBS. We watch Stephanopoulos on Election Day as he tells Clinton by phone that the exit polls say bell win, and later advises him to avoid being “too programmatic” in his victory speech. To see exactly how a young aide talks to a new president at the moment he’s elected is unusual, maybe unprecedented.
It’s easy to imagine that the inside stuff took place outside the war room. And some of it did. But the gap between public and private has been obliterated in presidential politics. The essence of the real war room is there in “The War Room.” They’re not mugging for the cameras, because the cameras are the campaign itself.
