Much of the movie is narrated by Obama himself through the audio version of his book, Dreams From My Father. The 2008 campaign will go down in history as one of the great abdications of responsibility of not just the press and the Republican party, but of us the American people. The refusal to read and take seriously Obama's own explication of his world view was inexcusable. One can reject the idea that a person's upbringing, parents, mentors, associations, friends, professors, religious leaders, and even his writings do not define who he becomes, but to do so is to turn a blind eye to history and relegate the entire genre of biography and autobiography to "entertainment." If politics is the arena of ideas, then who a politician trained under and what his program of training consisted of is highly relevant.
Towards the close of the film, D'Souza says: “The first time we didn’t know Barack Obama: now we do.” Certainly much of what we know now is due to observation of the president while he's been in office. But D'Souza's film adeptly fills in some of the gaps and provides indispensable context. Whatever your current view of Barack Obama, I highly recommend it.
