As personality traits go, Anthony Weiner is presumably in a high-90s percentile in both weakness of will and strength of ambition. Unfortunately, the former character flaw ends up winning. As the documentary Weiner proves, it was a highly competitive and compellingly entertaining battle to the very end.
The film continually provides scenes where the clashing dynamics are at war. After a preamble covering his feisty seven-term Congressional career, the film essentially begins with the scandal that led to Weiner’s resignation in 2011. Embarrassing online compromising photos proved too much to overcome. Yet Weiner resurfaces just two years later in a head-first foray into running for mayor of New York City. Weiner leads the primary field, only to have more photos surface from dates after his resignation.
What emerges is often raw footage that gets to the very core of Weiner’s relationship with his forgiving wife, Huma Abedin. A very public figure herself as a leading aide to Hillary Clinton, Abedin not only stays in the marriage, but actually takes an active role in the campaign. Until the second set of revelations hit.
Abedin learns about the new bombshells from the press rather than Weiner and her tone changes drastically. Since she is no longer willing to appear with him, Weiner must resort to bringing his very young son along as a surrogate prop to the voting booth on Election Day. Despite a turn in the polling, Weiner has pressed on for the rest of the campaign despite long odds.
“What is wrong with you,” MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell repeats like a mantra as Weiner tries various methods to fight him off on a one-on-one TV interview creepily done not face-to-face but from different cities. Plenty is the obvious answer. Yet there is plenty right about the legacy of Anthony Weiner as well.
Weiner’s popularity in the mayoral campaign prior to the revelations is stunning and remarkable yet we understand it given the charisma displayed. Also superb is his ability to gauge necessary strategy options, lead his advisors, and generally march on with unbridled enthusiasm and drive, even after it becomes essentially hopeless.
When co-director Josh Kriegman asks Weiner onscreen why he actually permitted him to film what amounted to some very stark personal moments between Weiner and Abedin, and Weiner and various staffers, the question isn’t answered directly. Yet viewing this excellent documentary, it is very evident that the winners here are the very citizens who alternately loved, then failed to come to grips with Weiner. After learning from the Bill Clinton scandal that great public deeds can supersede deplorable private ones, we can now update that thinking with the notion that there are limits to the permissible private hells of public officials.