HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW WHAT MITT CAN LEARN FROM HILLARY The Parallels Between the 2008 and 2012 Primaries by Humza Bokhari
VOLUME I, ISSUE 2
ONE PARTY RULE IN HUNGARY Authoritarianism Takes Root in Budapest by Gram Slattery
WHY GAME CHANGE ISN’T SEXIST by Holly Flynn
What Does Margin Call Say About the Crisis? by Sarah Coughlon
HPRONLINE.ORG
DISPATCH
An Honest Portrayal of Sarah Palin
SHOULD WE BLAME BANKERS?
THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012
LIN vs. ZUCK Who’s the Better Role Model for Harvard Students? by Anita Joseph
HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW A Nonpartisan Journal of Politics Established 1969
EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Jonathan Yip PUBLISHER: Andrew Seo MANAGING EDITOR: Neil Patel ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: Alex Chen ONLINE EDITOR: Paul Schied COVERS EDITOR: Beatrice Walton CAMPUS EDITOR: Tom Gaudett CAMPUS ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Medha Gargeya INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Alpkaan Celik U.S. SENIOR EDITOR: Caroline Cox U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Frank Mace U.S. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Daniel Backman WORLD SENIOR EDITOR: Josh Lipson WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Arjun Mody WORLD ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Gram Slattery B&A SENIOR EDITOR: Christine Ann Hurd B&A ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Eli Kozminsky B&A ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Lena Bae HUMOR EDITOR: Sarah Siskind STAFF DIRECTOR: Zeenia Framroze BUSINESS MANAGER: Olivia Zhu ASSISTANT BUSINESS MANAGER: Naji Filali CIRCULATION MANAGER: Ross Svenson DESIGN EDITOR: Sam Finegold GRAPHICS EDITOR: Gina Kim MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Eric Hendey WEBMASTER: Corinne Curcie WEBMASTER: Ben Shryock
SENIOR WRITERS Chris Danello, Kathy Lee, Paul Mathis, Max Novendstern, Jeremy Patashnik, Henry Shull, Simon Thompson, Jimmy Wu
STAFF
Jay Alver, Oreoluwa Babarinsa, Elizabeth Bloom, Humza Syed Bokhari, Peter Bozzo, Gabby Bryant, Samuel Coffin, Catherine Cook, Tyler Cusick, Jacob Drucker, Farha Faisal, Mikhaila Fogel, Harleen Gambhir, Aditi Ghai, Raphael Haro, Kaiyang Huang, Nur Ibrahim, Elsa Kania, Adam Kern, Sandra Korn, Ha Le, Ben Lopez, Jimmy Meixiong, Peyton Miller, Laura Mirviss, Chris Oppermann, Lily Ostrer, Samir Patel, Caitlin Pendleton, Mason Pesek, Heather Pickerell, John Prince, Matt Shuham, Martin Steinbauer, Alastair Su, Lucas Swisher, Rajiv Tarigopula, Pooja Venkatraman, Ben Wilcox, Danny Wilson, Jenny Ye, Benjamin Zhou
DESIGN STAFF
Sam Finegold, Nick Gavin, Caitlin Pendleton, Danielle Suh
ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr. Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz
Letters to the editor may be sent to: editor@hpronline.org.
WHY GAME CHANGE ISN’T SEXIST It’s an accurate portrayal of the 2008 campaign. Holly Flynn “I’m so glad you’re askin’ me these questions,” Sarah Palin says to Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, Senator John McCain’s campaign manager and speechwriter, during their initial meeting to discuss making her the Republican vice presidential nominee. “It’s important that you know exactly what you’re getting.” This comment, made ironic by the complete lack of knowledge the 2008 McCain campaign had of Palin, captures the theme of Game Change, the new HBO film starring Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Ed Harris. Based on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s eponymous book, Game Change chronicles the McCain campaign’s decision to tap the one-term governor of Alaska for the vice presidential nomination and the ensuing chaos that ultimately contributed to McCain’s downfall. Many Palin supporters have criticized the film as an untruthful, sexist portrayal of the former governor. Several of her aides have denounced it as fictional, while Meghan McCain characterized it as only “halfreal”and bashed Julianne Moore’s acting. Palin herself has chosen largely to ignore the hype, stating, “Being in the good graces of Hollywood’s ‘Team Obama’ isn’t top of my list.” But the film’s treatment of Palin is, in reality, incredibly fair. Throughout the film, she appears to be a strong, yet tender leader, a good mother, a human figure among political immortals. Julianne Moore is not a caricature in the vein of Tina Fey, but a transcendent actor who assumes all of Palin’s idiosyncrasies in a believable manner, right down to the last missin’ G. Moore shines in Palin’s greatest moments as much as she does in her weakest. Whenever Palin is shown in a less-than-positive light, it is because of an incident we already knew about — the Katie Couric interview or the $150,000 shopping spree. Critics would be hard-pressed to find a single moment where the narrative could be called
unfair or sexist because so much of the plot occurred in public view. The McCain and Palin camps can’t rewrite history, as much as they might like to do so. At her best, the Sarah Palin of Game Change is charismatic, witty, forceful, and well-spoken. At her worst, she withdraws into herself, worrying about her family and her reputation in Alaska to the point of paralyzation. But even when she slips up, the film is quick to spread the blame around. The vetting process for Palin was clearly shoddy, not because of incompetence, but because senior staff wanted so badly for it to work that they skipped obvious questions. When Palin became irascible, it was because the campaign had thrust her into a spotlight for which she simply was not ready. Even Dick Cheney thought her selection was a reckless choice — and as Mark Salter says in the film on election night, “When you lose the moral high ground to Dick Cheney, it’s time to rethink your entire life.” While Game Change is probably a reasonably accurate fictionalization of the 2008 campaign — its ‘anonymous’ sources are quite obviously Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, among other senior aides — the purpose of the film is to entertain. In a panel at the John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum last week following the world premiere of the film right here at Harvard, Mark Halperin, John Heilemann, and the president of HBO Films, Len Amato, discussed their decision to focus solely on the Sarah Palin subplot of Halperin and Heilemann’s book. Ultimately, they said, the other storylines didn’t pop as much as this one — the McCain narrative was simply tighter, and perfect for film. The film does not attempt to victimize Sarah Palin. No, it was the persona she herself created — the affable, down-to-earth hockey mom — who became at once a media darling and an object of ridicule and turned the 2008 election on its head, that made her perfect for film portrayal.
LESSONS FROM THE HUNGARIAN BACKSLIDE Gram Slattery
The specter of authoritarianism looms over Hungary. Once a harbinger of democracy in eastern Europe and a symbol of hope for liberal institutionalists within the EU, the Carpathian nation of ten million has begun to reverse its twenty-year post-Soviet march toward liberalization. Through its political reversion, Hungary has provided us with a humbling reminder that democratization, even in the West, is by no means a linear process. It started with an eccentricity in the electoral system: because of an overrepresentation of Hungary’s rural districts, the socially conservative Fidesz party took control of 68% of Parliament in 2010, despite earning only 52% of the popular vote. A year and a half later, Fidesz’s support has plummeted, such that only 16% of Hungarians now support a party that still controls 68% of the legislature. Under pre-existing law, two-thirds of Parliament was needed to overhaul the Constitution, a threshold Fidesz met in the 2010 elections. And it was with this special majority status that Fidesz instituted the “Basic Law,” a piece of constitutional legislation that acts as the new foundation of Hungarian governance. Structurally, Hungary’s government is still democratic, but functionally it has come to resemble what political comparativists might call a competitive authoritarian regime – a political system in which a democratic playing field still exists, but is tilted grossly in favor of incumbent powers. As an example, in perhaps the ultimate case of gerrymandering, the new Constitution constructed by Fidesz calls for the redrawing of Hungary’s already disproportionate electoral districts. The new electoral lines will make victory by any opposition party extremely difficult. So difficult, in fact, that a respected Hungarian think tank recently calculated that under the newly drawn districts, Fidesz would have won majorities in the 2002 and 2006 elections as well as in the 2010 contest. The constitutional assault on democracy is more widespread, however, than an attack on the electoral process. It includes several provisions, such as the arbitrary lowering of the retirement age for judges and a rapid expansion in the number of judicial appointees, all of which essentially place Hungary’s judicial branch under the control of Fidesz. Furthermore, the federal electoral commission will be placed under Fidesz control for the forseeable future, and the list of democracy-compromising grievances continues, far too many to list here. On top of these constitutional degradations, there are indications that the government itself is growing increasingly illiberal in nature, pledging to shut down Klubradio, one of the only remaining privately owned stations in Hungary that touches upon political issues.
The actions of Fidesz are repugnant, and it would be inappropriate for any freedom-loving people to treat the ruling party with anything but disdain. Still, while this crisis certainly affects the Hungarian populace, it does not point to a greater trend in eastern Europe, and I apologize to any Hungarian readers in advance for the apathy that could be gleaned from this comment, but the crisis in Hungary doesn’t really matter from an American foreign policy perspective. Of course, some may view this situation as a referendum on the usefulness of the EU as a democracy promotion tool, and it will be an interesting experiment on the power of multilateral institutionalism. But the legitimacy of the European Union as a whole is certainly not a function of one of its peripheral eastern members. Thus, the direction of Hungary’s evolving government is unlikely to have any significant ripple effect in the international political system. What makes the democratic backslide in Hungary interesting, however, are the troubling parellels that can be drawn in relation to our domestic political theater. From a historical perspective, we damn Elbridge Gerry to this day for his assault on electoral politics, and even those of us sympathetic to the activist left cringe when we recall FDR’s court-packing tactics. Both these events, as earlier alluded to, have direct parallels in the actions of Fidesz. In the realm of contemporary politics, many of us recoil at voter registration laws perceivedly aimed at partisan gains, and anyone with a respect for responsible statecraft balks when Republican leaders assert their primary goal to be the removal of Barack Obama from office. What Hungary has shown us is that our alarm at these attempts to place partisanship over democratic integrity is logical, and when the primacy of one’s party becomes paramount to the dignity of the political system, democracy inevitably suffers. To be sure, America is not Hungary: democracy in the US is a deeply ingrained ideology, not a product of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and it is difficult to compare our relatively stable tradition of liberalism with the transitional politics of Hungary. Furthermore, unlike Hungary, we have not conflated the hyperpartisan tactics of contemporary politics with the hyperpartisan mistakes of our past. But, as explicated, this partisan machinery that has destabilized democracy in Hungary has precedent, or at least parallel, in the US. To be sure, America is not about to backslide into competitive authoritarianism. When one analyzes the Hungarian example, however, it becomes obvious that when partisans serve the parochial interests of their respective parties over the interests of the democratic process, even if through means that are perfectly legal, the integrity of democracy is invariably diminished.
THE PRIMARY PARALLEL Humza Bokhari
Let’s take this scenario: A highly successful politician from a well-known political family decides to run for president, starting to unofficially prepare for a run years and years in advance. Confident about their chances, they assume the title of presumptive nominee far before the primaries begin. But they can’t make the sell. Seen as polarizing, out-of-touch, and entitled, their support hits a ceiling. They lose Iowa after pouring in millions to a surging candidate people didn’t take seriously. They win New Hampshire, though, regaining the mantle of inevitability. Nevada bolsters their credentials, but their percent of the vote in South Carolina is embarrassing. And February is somewhat of a disaster, with the potential to hit the breaks on their campaign entirely. Clinton campaigning for Obama in 2008. “Well, this isn’t exactly the party I’d planned, but I sure like the company,” she famously said in her concession speech in 2008. Romney probably isn’t planning one like it either. We could be talking about Hillary Clinton, the current Secretary of State and former 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, or Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican nomination this year. The Clinton-Romney comparisons have been being made for a while now, especially since Politico took the matter quite seriously back in December, but it’s only now that the comparisons are becoming even more evident and noteworthy. As a Clinton supporter, I followed her campaign really close in ‘o8 – and the parallels between her campaign and Romney’s are striking. Thus, there are a number of takeaways from Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign that Romney should keep in mind:
Take caucuses seriously. Hillary Clinton famously won only one caucus, the one in Nevada. The terribly flawed caucus system (definitely a conversation for another day), which made her leave Texas with a delegate deficit, was completely nonrepresentative of her support in several states. The numbers are surprising: In Idaho, Clinton won 17% of the binding caucus vote, but 36% in the non-binding primary. In Washington, she won only 31% in the caucus but came within striking distance of Obama with 46% in the primary; in Nebraska, the story was similar. In each of these cases, the primaries were just held for fun, but display clearly part of the reason why Obama ended the race way ahead in pledged delegates. And of course, in Texas, where Clinton won the primary, a third of the delegates were given away in a sketchy caucus that Obama won with 56% of the vote. Romney took quite a hit in Minnesota and Colorado recently (Missouri’s was a pretty primary like the ones that did Clinton no good in ’08), un-won Iowa, and may not have won Maine - caucuses, other than Nevada, have not been great for him. Caucuses are a great way to fall real behind in delegates for no good reason, and pouring money into caucus states doesn’t work, as both Clinton and Romney have seen.
Don’t let yourself be the underdog. A supposed frontrunner should really try to avoid spending the majority of the race with their back against the wall. Yes, that’s when Clinton performed best, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough for her to win, and didn’t do much for her media narrative. Her memorable March 4th victory speech included a shout-out to underdogs. “For everyone here in Ohio and across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you.” But it’s hard to be an underdog when you are a popular former First Lady or governor with tremendous establishment influence.
Don’t ignore the “first” factor. In today’s unfortunately unequal society, where discrimination on the basis of gender and religion is still very much a problem, Romney and Clinton both have had to tackle with the problem of being the first – Latter-Day Saints or female, respectively – candidate from their respective groups to come close to the presidency. Romney, seeking the nomination of a party with a serious religious litmus test, attempts to downplay his religion, as Clinton, with her short hair (which is now much longer, incidentally) and pantsuits, tried to draw the focus away from her gender. It was only too late that Clinton realized how significant her run actually was, when Sarah Palin, who symbolized a whole different set of gender stereotypes, single-handedly iceberged Clinton’s efforts to make the national stage one where women would feel welcome. Yet Romney’s religion is perhaps not a huge barrier the way Clinton’s gender was, and overcoming it would not be the historic accomplishment Clinton’s win would have been.
Don’t discount third-wheel candidates. One of the Clinton campaign’s unfortunate mistakes was not being concerned enough about John Edwards, who though he was indicted last year on six felony charges came second in Iowa and won a fair amount of the South Carolina vote, making Clinton’s losses in those
states that much worse. Romney’s failing to take Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich – all of whom have spun around in third-wheel status at some point in this campaign – seriously has hurt him in almost every state there has been a race.
Never trust the establishment. I would argue that for the bulk of the 2008 campaign, after the dust had se ttled from the first two months of primaries, Obama was the establishment candidate. The same establishment, famously characterized by the ritzy cadre of “superdelegates” that were to hand Clinton the nomination, abandoned her in a heartbeat when it looked like Obama was going to win. Clinton calmly waited until 2008 to run, cheering on John Kerry in 2004; he did not return the favor, and now seems interested in her spot at State. The very Ted Kennedy who had famously defenestrated the Carter campaign in 1980 called for Clinton to quit; his niece Caroline, another Obama supporter, hypocritically leaped at the chance to grab Clinton’s senate seat after the election. Clinton superdelegates jumped ship faster than Francesco Schettino when the Obama train became fashionable. I would argue bitterness and jealousy towards the Clintons, a self-made political success story, led delegates to back Obama, whom they had no reason to hold personal grudges against. Romney has been leaning on the establishment far too much this campaign, rolling out fancy endorsement after endorsement – but that hasn’t been resonating with the voters, who are leaning towards Santorum possibly because he isn’t the establishment’s poster boy. As long as high-profile insiders keep telling GOP voters who they should be supporting, they’ll sound patronizing and won’t make the sell. As a disclaimer, I would support Clinton if she ran again, and I support President Obama now. But it’s valuable to see how the events of four years ago offer insight into the campaign playing out in front of us today. That’s not to say Romney won’t win – he still might – but even if he does, lessons learned might make another run easier.
LIN vs. ZUCKERBERG CHOOSING THE BETTER MODEL FOR HARVARD LEADERSHIP Anita Joseph
They are both precocious twenty-something year olds who are finding incredible success early in life, underdogs with unconventional playing styles, and people who stuck out in a crowd of wunderkinds during their undergraduate years. However, this is where the similarities end.
MEET THE CONTENDERS Jeremy Lin is celebrated as the “humble hero from Harvard,” and passes on credit to his teammates as easily as he passes the ball to them on the court. After his 38-point night against Lakers, he spent a good portion of his postgame interview talking up Knicks forward Jared Jeffires, “I couldn’t think of anybody who’s more underrated than Jared.” Much of Lin’s unconventional strength seems to come from his leadership abilities on the court, namely his ability to understand who is a strong option
and who is not, as well as his ability to facilitate other people’s success in addition to his own. He sleeps on people’s couches and considers himself a private and low-key person. His humility, boosted by a belief in the Augustinian Christian idea that men should accept their fundamental weakness of will without God, comes off as his dominant characteristic. As Knicks guard Iman Shumpert put it, “He’ll give you the clothes off his back.” Mark Zuckerberg possesses a very different image. He is celebrated as a hyper-successful entrepreneur who cut corners, drove over other people, and muscled his way into being rich and powerful. Now that Facebook has gone public, it is clear that Zuckerberg has engineered a company that is far from resembling a team effort. He holds over 25 percent of Facebook shares outright, and has negotiated with other investors to raise his effective voting power to 60 percent of shares. Even if his image owes a great deal to media photoshopping, Zuckerberg has done little to combat the
idea that he values his own opinion and comfort much more than anyone else’s, a philosophy embodied in everything from the way he dresses—you can wear flip-flops to a meet-and-greet when you’re Mark Zuckberg—to the way he communicates with his users—changes to Facebook are announced after the fact, because users are still in the Platonic cave of ignorance.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE This titanic contrast is important because it’s evident that undergraduates are confused as to whether the Jeremy or Mark model best fits the Harvard student. This was evidenced by the recent dueling Internet memes of “Harvard Douche Bag” and “Harvard Good Guy.” One “lights cigars/with Princeton acceptance letter,” and the other, “is rich/works dorm crew.” One “gives a quarter to a homeless person/puts on resume,” and the other, “finishes thesis draft early/doesn’t post on Facebook.” What is at stake in the contrast between these two figures is not their level of talent. Rather, the central difference between these two figures is their degree of humility. Another indication of this confusion came in an email that was recently circulated around campus entitled, “A Rant About Women,” in which the writer, an N.Y.U. fellow, complained that, “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.” The many women who passed on this email seemed genuinely concerned that being a humble person was neither a widespread nor worthy way of behaving on this campus. Then again, perhaps we’re not confused about ourselves at all. Perhaps we’re confused about how we compare to the rest of the student body. The Class of 2014, when surveyed at the end of their freshman year, ranked “hard work, honesty, respect, and compassion” as their top four personal values. Yet, they ranked “success” as the value Harvard stands for the most. Therefore, individually, we see ourselves as more like Jeremy, though in the context of
Harvard, we think we need to be more like Mark.
THE STRONGER PLAYER It seems pretty evident that being a Mark would bring us quicker and sharper success. Business analysts seem sure, at least now, that Facebook’s phenomenal development is due in large part to Zuckerberg’s inability to listen to opposition and confidence that his decisions will always be the right ones. Facebook filed for a $5 billion-dollar public offering three weeks ago because he single-handedly held off powerful buys, including a potentially billion-dollar one from Viacom. In contrast, Lin’s success may have been delayed because the strengths of his game seem more altruistic and less selfish—more team basketball than All-star basketball. At least one NBA player, albeit one who changed his name to Metta World Peace, has advised him to get more swagger. “You’re in New York, the fashion capital. Change your haircut, OK? You’re a star now. Wear some shades. Shades, OK? Put down the nerdy Harvard book glasses.” Of course, my purpose is not to demonize Mark Zuckberg. Regardless of his persona, Facebook has improved mechanisms of global social relations and has become a key method of facilitating democratic uprisings. Still, the merit of a person’s accomplishment should be separated from a person’s public character, and we can disapprove of one while still acknowledging the other. In this light, it’s important to note that the kind of public respect Jeremy Lin has, whether his magical performances continue are not, is borne of genuine admiration rather than resentful acknowledgement. People pay tribute to Mark Zuckerberg, but people want to follow Jeremy Lin. One is clearly a better model for leadership out of Harvard. After all, how many puns have you heard on “Zuckerberg” lately?
PATIENT ZERO
Moral Ambiguity in Margin Call and the 2008 Financial Crisis.
Sarah Coughlon Most disaster movies divide into four stages: normalcy, warning signs, crisis, and return to normalcy. Margin Call is a film about warning signs. In the summer of 2008, a young risk-management analyst at a fictionalized Wall Street investment bank sees a warning sign in the models predicting the worth of the firm’s assets. Late at night, alone at his computer in the film’s Lehman Brothers stand-in, he is the first to see that Wall Street is on the brink of sudden collapse. The young banker, Peter Sullivan, follows that news as it travels up the chain of command during the final thirty-six hours before the crash… and the rest is all-too-recent history. Actually, that history is never explicitly laid out in Margin Call: this disaster film plays with the formula by stopping short of the disaster and sending us out of the theater into a world that hasn’t yet returned to normal. At one point, one of the bankers looks out from a company car and wonders aloud if any of the “normal people” knows what’s about to happen… and we don’t really need that question answered for us. No, we didn’t have any idea, and to a certain extent we still don’t. In that sense, Margin Call is a deeply ironic film: Director JC Chardon is (more or less) telling a true story that the audience-members were never privy to while it was happening, but the emotional payoff comes from inviting us to be much more concerned about the fate of the economy than any of these characters seem to be. That emotional sleight of hand is one of the film’s greatest strengths, problematic though it is. In the age of Occupy, it’s very difficult to view these young and careless bankers positively. Some of them, like division head Jared Cohen (Simon Baker looking even more snake-like and unsympathetic than usual), are the furthest thing possible from heroes. However, they are also not quite villains as evildoers should lie outside of our sympathy, where we see their choice and can condemn them for it. There is never any doubt about the harm that these characters have caused, but there is a more complex form of moral ambiguity when we cannot isolate the bad guy’s choices or avoid feeling pity for him. That ambiguity is central to Margin Call. The audience is constantly forced to ask if these bankers have real agency: these masters of the
universe are scrambling to control forces that they barely understand, let alone have power over. In one of the film’s most striking moments, CEO Richard Fuld stand-in (Jeremy Irons) instructs Sullivan to explain the situation to him “as you would to a three-year-old, or a golden retriever.” The subtext is not lost on the audience: these people are playing a deadly serious game, and they’ve just realized how little they understand it. How are we to react to this? This failure to realize their own limits should be the place where the audience pins our moral outrage on Wall Street: they played with fire and we got burned. But somehow that moral outrage is arrested when we watch these individual bankers realize their mistake: we’ve
This failure to realize their own limits should be the place where the audience pins our moral outrage on Wall Street: they played with fire and we got burned.
zoomed in on Icharus’ face when he realizes that the wings are melting, and our pity blunts our anger. If the outside world has a representative in the cold boardrooms where the fate of American finance is being decided, it’s Peter Sullivan, the young banker who sounded the alarm call in the first place. Picking up geek-chic where Star Trek left off, Zachary Quinto plays Sullivan with just enough uncertainty to arouse our sympathies. He is not quite one of “them.” He’s a brilliant young physicist who went into banking because those equations pay better. He doesn’t reject the value system that prizes the firm’s profits above all else, but he doesn’t seem to have bought into it either. We make sense of the crash through his confusion. Of course, Margin Call is not a primer on the 2008 financial crisis, and it is a better film for having not taken an explicit political stance. However, by using this historical event as a means to explore these larger themes of agency and blame, the film does provoke some uncomfortable questions about the crash. How much blame can we pin on individual people? Can we trust the banks to use their economic power wisely? Is it fair to say that the bankers caused massive harm to others because of greed and recklessness, but stop short of calling them bad people? There are no answers in this film, but it deserves credit for asking those questions.