A year later, it’s a bittersweet experience watching Amy Rice and Alicia Sams’ documentary, “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama,” which premieres at 9PM Tuesday (11.03.09) on HBO.

(Also depressing: There was a time in the not-so-distant past when a film like this – with this kind of access to a successful presidential campaign – would have been a theatrical release.)

Starting on Election Night 2006, the film follows then-Sen. Barack Obama as he launches his presidential campaign, winning the nomination and the election after overcoming a field of better-known opponents – including the all-but-coronated Hillary Rodham Clinton – and a skeptical press corps that regularly predicted his collapse.

The film goes from the 2006 election (“Are you going to run for president?”) to Iowa in 2007 and on to the Iowa caucuses, continues through the primaries, then carries him through the general election. It touches on the debates, Sarah Palin, the economy’s near-collapse and Republican efforts to demonize Obama – leading up to Election Day 2008 and its intense emotional resonance.

If you were an Obama supporter – which a majority of voting Americans were – it’s hard not to get caught up in the memory of moments that were powerful to experience as they were occurring: his Philadelphia speech on race, his acceptance speech at the stadium in Denver, the flood of feelings and tears of joy when West Coast polls closed on Election Day and the TV networks projected Obama as the winner and new president.

Rice and Sams had stunning access, though less to Obama himself as the year went on. But they seemed to regularly be filming such key insiders as campaign overlords David Axelrod and David Plouffe, speechwriter Jon Favreau and communications director Robert Gibbs. Watching a field operative named Ronnie Cho, his enthusiasm infectious to the volunteers he must motivate, brings back the sense of excitement, possibility and, yes, hope, that the Obama campaign generated.

You get behind-the-scenes footage of Obama preparing for the debates with John McCain, dissolving into tired giggles at one moment when he can’t remember or recite his bullet points on resurrecting the economy. It’s also fascinating to see a stand-in for McCain pelt Obama with accusations about former Weatherman William Ayers – and then see footage of the actual debate, in which McCain uses nearly identical language to attack Obama, who has a well-rehearsed but spontaneous-seeming rebuttal.

That sense of hope – that feeling you had a year ago when Obama was elected – has been under assault for the past year. There have been disappointments, no matter what your issue. Guantanamo, Afghanistan, gays in the military, bank bail-outs, the Dalai Lama refused a visit at the White House, health insurance – need I say more? Everyday, it seems you read something else that makes you wonder what happened to the guy we thought we elected.

So, before watching “By the People,” it’s probably helpful to read Anna Quindlen’s well-written cover story in this week’s Newsweek, which defends Obama against the crush of outsized expectations. As I said, watching this film is bittersweet because it brings back memories of the dream of change that would rescue us from the dark recesses of Bush-Cheney. But while the approach at the top has changed, Obama is still just one person, trying to thread his way through a system that seems specifically designed to throttle progressive change.

That’s Quindlen’s point, as well: Obama is a smart guy who has to work in a brutally unforgiving and public system – and he can’t do it alone. But he’s up against an intransigent opposition with no ideas of its own beyond impeding Obama and causing his agenda to fail. Her message: Trust in his intelligence and vision – and have patience. If you’re going to put pressure on anyone, pressure the obstructionists. Don’t focus your anger on the guy who’s not going fast enough to suit you when he’s being forced to operate at a crawl because of a mean-spirited, counter-productive opposition with no thought behind it other than to impede.

For an intriguing companion piece to “By the People,” check out Barry Levinson’s “Poliwood,” which debuts at 7:30PM Monday (11.02.09) on Showtime. Ostensibly a look at Levinson’s travels with the Creative Coalition, the arts-advocacy political action group spearheaded by actors and musicians, it follows Levinson to both the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions (ending at the inauguration of Barack Obama).

Levinson casts a wide net, but his central point is that we’ve reached the point where TV sets the agenda for all political discussion and elections by creating and promoting political messages based on manipulating images. He takes on the issue of celebrities injecting themselves into the political process, contrasting the earnest, articulate efforts of actors like Tim Daly and Anne Hathaway with the knee-jerk response of those who assume all actor-activists are strident, militant and high-handed.

Levinson talks to such Creative Coalition activists as Susan Sarandon, Matthew Modine and Josh Lucas, exploring the use of celebrity in politics, getting input from political consultant Lawrence O’Donnell and pundit Eric Alterman along the way.

One of the most intriguing moments is a workshop for the Creative Coalition with Republican operative and pollster Frank Luntz, who tries to explain to the celebrities that they’re muting their own influence by focusing on discussing their feelings about the issues, instead of creating language and messages that will persuade audiences.

His point is valid: To succeed in reaching an audience, you have to understand it and use an approach that resonates with it, one crafted specifically for that audience. Luntz himself has been scarily successful in coming up with language to scare people about the dangers of single-payer health insurance and raise doubts about global warming, among other things.

But the Creative Coalition meeting quickly grinds to a halt when Lucas takes umbrage at the idea of being programmed or packaged in the way Luntz suggests. Lucas wants to speak from the heart – whether or not his personal message is effective – rather than manipulate an audience with focus-group-tested phrases.

Which may explain why the right has maintained such a stranglehold on the message in the daily public colloquy: They’re willing to sacrifice beliefs in order to win. They’ll say whatever they need to in order to sow fear and doubt, if it means an advantage in setting the agenda and keeping opponents off-balance and on the defensive. It’s easy to craft a winning message when you don’t have to struggle with core beliefs or personal morality.

Interestingly, both documentaries conclude to the sound of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”: by Bruce Springsteen in “By the People,” by Counting Crows in “Poliwood.” Levinson, however, seems to mean it ironically, having reached the conclusion that television has turned presidential elections into a near-clone of the Miss America pageant – a contest ruled by image, rather than substance.

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