'Frontline' compares Obama, McCain side by side
There is required viewing tonight for anyone who remains undecided in the presidential race.
As if anybody could be at this point.
Yet I don't want to dismiss anyone who might still be mulling the alternatives. Even I have to admit, this is the best choice of presidential candidates in my voting life. I can see either Barack Obama or John McCain serving with distinction as president, and I think either would offer strong leadership in the face of the current economic crisis.
The question is, which one is best? So the PBS investigative series "Frontline" returns at 8 p.m. today on Channel 11, not to answer that question, but to give viewers the material so that they might better answer it themselves.
"Both of them in what they convey to voters - one in a long career spanning decades, the other in a lightning flash of a career spanning what seems like minutes - (offer) a sense of breaking with the status quo, a sense of change, a sense that things need to be done differently than they've been done before," says journalist Matt Bai in the two-hour documentary. "And the question I think a lot of voters will have to ask themselves is, who's actually going to deliver?"
"Frontline" has been delivering its side-by-side comparisons of the presidential candidates for every election going back 20 years. This edition, produced by Michael Kirk, isn't just informative; it spools out like a story, moving smoothly not just from candidate to candidate, but back and forth in time.
For instance, in discussing the methodical way Obama went from joining the U.S. Senate in 2004 to running for president only three years later, the documentary jumps back to explore the equally methodical way he chose Chicago to settle in, and the way he worked as a community organizer before attending Harvard Law School and then returning to Chicago to launch his political career.
Meanwhile, the outrage McCain felt on the discovery of the torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison leads directly back to the torture he experienced firsthand in the so-called Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.
"Frontline" doesn't just lay out the candidates and their positions one next to the other. It spins a yarn, so that even voters who have made up their minds might enjoy it, and perhaps even learn something new.
Me, I like the way my old Chicago Reader colleague Salim Muwakkil draws comparisons between Obama and Mayor Harold Washington. Obama's 2004 Senate victory "looked like a replay of Harold Washington's mayoral victory," he points out. Obama also emulates Washington in the way he seeks out all points of view - those agreeing with his previously held positions and not - and makes his decisions from there. "Frontline" points out that respect for all opinions and his skill as a mediator are what made him the perfect choice as president of the Harvard Law Review.
McCain, meanwhile, comes off as a battler. "His life has been proving people wrong," says his former press secretary Victoria Clarke. He battled back from captivity in Vietnam, immersed himself in the National War College afterward in an attempt to understand what went wrong and went into politics in large part to influence policy and help the nation avoid making those same mistakes again.
That motivation, in fact, is something both candidates share. Just as McCain went into politics intending to avoid future Vietnams, Obama went to Harvard Law and then embarked on a political career in an attempt to do on a large scale what he had been trying to do as a community organizer: influence policy and change peoples' lives for the better.
Producer Kirk, who previously did the "Frontline" episodes "Bush's War" and "Cheney's Law," tries to treat the two with an even hand. If McCain comes under some complicit criticism for kowtowing to the conservative right while trying to maintain his stance as a maverick, Obama's idealism isn't exactly enhanced by the contrived, methodical way he built power and ran his campaign, from his entry into the Senate on.
Yet both come off for the most part as noble and purposeful. If "Frontline" suggests Obama cloaks his steely purpose in a velvet glove, while McCain simply shakes an iron fist, doesn't that also reflect the personas they've been projecting in the debates?
So watch "Frontline" tonight and the final scheduled debate between the two Wednesday, Oct. 15, in order to be an enlightened electorate, but also to be delightfully and surprisingly entertained as well.
In the air
Remotely interesting: David Alan Grier debuts "Chocolate News," a new newsmagazine lampoon, at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday on Comedy Central. For that they're moving "The Sarah Silverman Program" away from "South Park?" - ABC's "Eli Stone" returns at 9 p.m. today on WLS Channel 7.
Rainn Wilson of "The Office" and "Six Feet Under" programs Turner Classic Movies tonight. "High School Confidential" runs at 7, followed by "The Gene Krupa Story" at 8:30, "Singin' in the Rain" at 10:15 and "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" at 12:30. Wilson and TCM's Robert Osborne will introduce the films.
End of the dial: Personality-talk WGN 720-AM remained atop summer Arbitron ratings in the first People Meter survey, but urban-contemporary WGCI 107.5-FM dropped to 14th. Minority groups have complained the People Meter doesn't give a fair representation of the audience. Classic-rock WDRV 97.1-FM, all-news WBBM 780-AM, oldies WLS 94.7-FM and all-talk WLS 890-AM filled out the top five.
WLS Channel 7 anchor Linda Yu is among those discussing "Where Women Stand: A Survey of Newsroom Staff in the Chicago Region" at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. It's free and open to the public.