From the dudes who brought you the Iran Deal, détente with communist Cuba, and “Pod Save America” comes “Running with Beto.” The 93-minute Don Quixote remake masquerading as an HBO documentary follows Robert Francis O’Rourke, failson, former furry, and quite possibly the most boring man in America, as he drives around in a sweaty blue shirt, rasping into cellphone cameras, posing with moonstruck teenagers, and otherwise squandering $80 million in his failed attempt to unseat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a man so widely disliked that one of his Republican colleagues once joked, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
By now, “Beto mania” — apparently pronounced Beh-toe, except when it’s pronounced Beat-o or Bed-oh — appears to have (mercifully) run its course, but to watch the dull, painfully overlong documentary is to relive the media-hyped, this-time-it’s-for-real midterm election campaign from within the eye of the echo chamber. O’Rourke, his team, his celebrity fans, and narrative-promoting flacks in the media were all seemingly convinced he would be victorious, a belief presumably shared by those who greenlighted the documentary itself and observable from director David Modigliani’s final product.
Ironically, this framing underscores the opposite reality, depicting a jejune campaign of neophytes, naïfs, and diehard believers. At one point, campaign chief David Wysong appears genuinely shocked that O’Rourke’s favorables went down after a negative Cruz ad. In a canvassing meeting, field director Zach Malitz declares to a room of volunteers: “Elections are a matter of life and death. This is possibly the most important thing that many of us will do with our lives.” What a depressing thought that is.
Moreover, “Running with Beto” confirms yet again what was already apparent to most noncelebrities and those outside the Beltway: Far from “The Prince That Was Promised,” O’Rourke is a prattling empty suit, and a weird one at that, held aloft by his dad’s reputation and his wife’s family money. “Who talks about mainstreams anymore?” he asks after hearing a quote from Cruz accusing O’Rourke of holding progressive views outside the ideological mainstream of most Texas voters. People who win Senate races, I guess? Not once in his state-crossing campaign is O’Rourke shown wearing cowboy boots, even after a voter makes a comment about it at one of his earlier events. That’s Jon Ossoff bad.
Indeed, the most baffling thing about “Running with Beto” is how O’Rourke managed to become the Next Big Thing worthy of a candidate documentary, national name ID, and the fawning, glossy profiles such as the widely mocked April cover story of Vanity Fair. Watching an ever-hoarse O’Rourke croak out ceaseless vapidities at campaign stop after campaign stop, all the while flailing his arms about as if he were playing an invisible game of Wii tennis, makes one feel some preemptive sympathy for the good people of Iowa and New Hampshire.
At one campaign stop, a commendably forthright woman asks O’Rourke, “Yeah, how does being in a punk rock band qualify you to be my senator?”
“Hang with me for a second,” O’Rourke replied, “’cuz it’s all gonna come together.”
It never did, of course. But for O’Rourke, that’s no matter; it’s just another step on his hero’s journey. Don “Beto” Quixote is already off chasing bigger windmills, and the echo chamber has moved on to crown its Next Big Thing.
