Reviews

Our Brand is Crisis

Doc raises legitimate questions about the exporting of democracy

By MATTIAS FREY | June 30, 2006

3.5 Stars

Our Brand Is Crisis

For decades, US political consultants have won elections across the globe. For James Carville and Jeremy Rosner, democracy is a brand to be marketed and exported. In this documentary of the former Clintonites’ work on Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s Bolivian presidential campaign, first-time director Rachel Boynton obtains remarkable access to focus-group analyses and strategy sessions. The smug neo-liberal candidate is out of touch with the electorate, and the spin doctors rehearse a script of faux humility. Boynton’s restrained vérité reveals the consultants’ video-game mentality — and the violent consequences of their meddling. Although dealing with Bolivian internal politics, Brand poses a psychogram of American interventionism. The consultants’ arrogant ignorance of local culture and their dogmatic belief in US values beg larger questions about the merits of exporting America’s brand of democracy.