The big question last week when Barack Obama’s campaign released a two-minute trailer for “The Road We Traveled,” was would people watch the 17-minute documentary? The people have spoken.
Five days after posting, the video, which details the president’s first three years in office, has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. To put that in perspective, Obama’s first campaign documentary, the 30-minute “American Stories, American Solutions” from 2008, has been viewed only 2.2 million times. But it’s taken three years to hit that mark. The Obama campaign was also reporting that the video brought more traffic to its website than any other time this year.
The documentary, however, isn’t as uplifting as one might expect and plays perfectly into the narrative the campaign is trying to get at: Things are tough now, but they could have been worse. Overall, the video argues that Obama made tough—and at times unpopular—decisions that in the end made the country bette.
Reactions to the video, of course, have been mixed. Some love it, some hate it, but almost everyone, even those who can’t vote yet, have an opinion.
“I am not old enough to vote, but when you first ran for president I was only in second grade, and when I think about now and how much things have changed and how my dad got his job back, I know you should be elected president again,” wrote Loneiceicle.
For the biggest target audience, independent swing voters, the verdict is still out. “Just great. A documentary taking credit for all that’s gone well, and blaming someone else for all that hasn’t,” wrote Tezcatlepocatl. “As an independent who’s torn on who to support, I’d appreciate an incumbent president who is honest about his achievements and failures, and who runs his campaign on fact and pragmatism.”
It’s from the video who Obama is planning on running against as well. When talking about the automotive company bailouts, the campaign takes direct aim at Republican front runner Mitt Romney and an editorial he pinned that suggested that the government should let Detroit go bankrupt.
