Comment: The Truth in “King of Bain”

The reviews for “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” a twenty-seven-minute campaign documentary distributed online by a Super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich, have not been kind. “Highly misleading” and “manipulative,” declared the Washington Post. “Misleading and exaggerated,” said the Times. On Monday, in South Carolina, the film’s subject, Romney, called it “probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot.”

The criticisms are grounded in the belief that political advertising should be factually accurate and presented in a balanced context. That would surely be desirable, and it is useful for journalists to try to hold politicians accountable for their lies. Yet to dismiss “King of Bain” because it selects facts, distorts history, and tugs unrelentingly on the viewer’s emotions would be to overlook other interesting aspects of the film. “King of Bain” is to the Super PAC era of political distortion what “Apocalypse Now” was to Hollywood’s era of the auteur director: an apotheosis of inspired excess, and a marker of the times we inhabit.