THE FINAL YEAR REVEALS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S NAÏVETY AND ARROGANCE:

Rhodes twice reassures us that Clinton will win. “I’m sure,” he says with a smirk on a trip to Southeast Asia. Asked later whether a Trump administration might endanger his accomplishments, he says, “I’ve never really considered that he has any opportunity to win the election.” So what does the speechwriter and former aspiring novelist have to say when Trump does in fact win? “I mean, uh, I can’t even [long pause] I can’t, I ca— [long pause] I mean I, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t put it into words. I don’t know what the words are.”

The Final Year, though, is chiefly a study of Obama-administration foreign policy as overseen by Secretary of State John Kerry, Power, and Rhodes, who at the time of filming had become (in)famous for telling The New York Times Magazine that he had set up an “echo chamber” in Washington of Obama sycophants in order to mislead the American people about expert opinion on the Iran deal, and for pouring contempt on D.C. reporters, who he said were typically 27 and “literally know nothing.”

From the doc, it appears that Rhodes, not Kerry, was running U.S. foreign policy in 2016, and perhaps for some time before that. At an event in Vietnam, for instance, Rhodes is seen giving orders to Kerry and telling him how many questions he’s allowed to answer — two. Kerry spends much of the film flitting around trying to look useful. On a visit to Greenland, he says, “This is seeing firsthand things I’ve read about and I think it’ll make me a more urgent advocate.”

I’m pretty sure Hilary Henkin and David Mamet didn’t write Wag the Dog as a how-to guide for presidential administrations.