Review

  • I've watched a few of these now, and they're all quite fascinating. The series is a bit too gimmicky, with way too many unnecessary reenactments of even the littlest things (you can't have a random person talk about what it was like to be at a convention without an actor being shown sitting in a convention seat), but it's still quite interesting.

    They are full of interesting tidbits. For example, they suggest that in 1960 the Republicans weren't yet the party African Americans hated and Nixon could have won them over with some help from the White House. It was also interesting to see that, like Gore years later, Nixon decided not to challenge the results - even though the election was most probably stolen from him - because it would be bad for the country. By 1968 he'd given up on the black vote and figured if cheating worked for Kennedy it would work for him as well.

    Presidential elections look like sleazy affairs, and it appears that candidates like Dukakis that try to run a genuinely honest and positive campaign just get knocked down for it, so it's not a series that is going to make you feel better about the election process. But it is interesting.