Review: ‘The Limits of Hope: Inside Obama’s White House’ weighs the last 7 years

Al Jazeera America, the soon-to-close local cable-news arm of Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network, is going out big before it goes black with an excellent four-hour documentary series “The Limits of Hope: Inside Obama’s White House.” Co-produced with the BBC, it airs over four consecutive nights, Thursday through Sunday.

There are those, of course, for whom four hours inside Obama’s White House will be four hours too many; possibly, there are some for whom this conjunction of venue and subject will stand as evidence that the president is indeed a Muslim, as a remarkable 43% of Republicans still believe to be the case, according to a CNN/ORC poll from last September.

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But if the current election season hasn’t drained all the life out of you, and you can stand to relive the last seven years, and you are ready to approach the subject at least with an open mind, you’ll find here a fascinating look into the nuts and bolts of how policy has been made and decisions have been reached inside this still-active administration, his opponents’ hopeful use of the term “lame duck” notwithstanding. If it only reminds us of the distance between being an armchair president and being the actual one, it will have done a public service.

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, economic adviser Christina Romer and the president himself are among the many insiders who sat for new interviews, but other key voices, including secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are included as well.

Republicans are less well represented, but this is not a “balanced” look at Obama’s presidency in the sense that it invites his opponents to counter anything said in his favor; his critics are all over the film, in any case, if mostly in archival clips. Rather, it’s a straightforward, mostly first-person account — long on anecdote and absent punditry — of the workings of the presidency through an exhausting number of national and international challenges. The episodes are devoted in turn to the financial crisis (with a side of climate change), Obamacare, the Middle East and a smorgasbord of domestic issues, including gun control, race relations and immigration.

Of course, to the extent that this report, like any, is put together from the testimony and by the work of mere humans, it is bound to be partial, both in not covering everything and in having a point of view. But as the work of Britons (specifically the documentary production company Brook Lapping) for an international audience, it has less of an agenda — including a commercial agenda — than a similar homemade product might have had. Success and failure get equal time.

If there is some implicit marveling from abroad at our lack of guaranteed healthcare and sensible gun laws, the approach is on the whole evenhanded and cool-headed. The filmmakers forgo the manipulative soundtrack and visual effects so often used even in reputable documentaries to turn up the tension, to redouble the drama; that’s not to say it hasn’t been assembled to be highly watchable, but for the aim is more for sense than sensation.

Policy aside, a few things about Obama’s temperament and approach seem clear here: He works hard; he prefers argument to an echo chamber; that he’s willing to take a chance and also more than usually willing, for a politician, to admit a misstep; and that he takes a measure of history and his place in it — likening himself to a relay runner — than some of his supporters would like.

“My view of human progress has stayed surprisingly constant throughout my presidency,” Obama says near the series end. “The world today with all its pain and all its sorrow is more just, more democratic, more free, more tolerant, healthier, wealthier, better educated, more connected, more empathetic than ever before.” All things being relative, and the arc of the moral universe being long, as it bends toward justice.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATimesTVLloyd

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‘Limits of Hope: Inside Obama’s White House’

Where: Al Jazeera America

When: 7 and 11 p.m. Thursday through Sunday

Not Rated