How to win a presidential election? American political consultants have long traveled the globe, running presidential campaigns and helping politicians winning elections. The story of the rise and fall of the last President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, also known as Goni, focusing on his American political spin doctors as they get him elected after a hotly contested campaign.
But the effect of the electoral campaign doesn't last long. The consultants counsel him through unrest and riots, and ultimately cannot save him from being violently overthrown by a population, angered and frustrated by globalization and fed up with poverty. More than 30 people die in the protests.
With unlimited access, the film follows Clinton's and John Kerry's consultants - the Greenberg Carville Shrum team - as they work behind the scenes in Latin America's hallways of power. We see electoral focus groups secretly observed through one-way mirrors, analysis of polls and creation of strategy to win, media training, in which James Carville tells the candidate exactly what to say to the press, and finally, advisors counseling a president in crisis. It shows us also what must happen for democracy to succeed in any country - that people need results, not promises.
OUR BRAND IS CRISIS is a politically current and topical story at a time when democracy and American influence are facing critical challenges worldwide.
But in the end--the people speak--that's satisfaction.
