Feeling Good About America: The 1976 Presidential Election (2016 public TV documentary)

[SouthBayDem]

Directed by Paul Tait Roberts, Feeling Good About America is an Emmy-winning, one-hour documentary that examines the 1976 presidential contest, which took place in the aftermath of a very turbulent period that featured the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. But a new feeling was sweeping coast to coast as people pulled together to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial and to select a new president who could help close the book on an awful decade. Feeling Good About America tells the story of the 1976 presidential election where then-former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, little-known former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, and incumbent President Gerald Ford battled for the nation’s highest office. Through interviews with Walter Mondale, Jack Ford, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stuart K. Spencer, and many more, the film shows how Reagan took his fight for the Republican nomination all the way to the Republican National Convention, how Ford tried to harness the positive energy of the bicentennial to win a full term in the White House, and how Carter charmed America by courting the rock ‘n’ roll vote and playing off his Southern heritage.

Feeling Good About America was produced by the UVA Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations, which regularly partner to produce documentary films for public television on American politics and history. Feeling Good About America won an Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Related links:

University of Virginia Center for Politics official webpage about Feeling Good About America

UVA 2017 press release: Center for Politics Wins Emmy Award for ‘Feeling Good About America’ Documentary

PBS has a video page including a transcript.

I found my recording of this documentary off my local PBS station's "World" subchannel back around Independence Day 2024 while looking to clean out my DVR over the holidays. Then I found that YouTube had it in 1080p HD (unlike my recording in 480p SD), so it was easy to free up an hour on the DVR.

This documentary was produced when it was considered impossible that someone like the current guy could actually win an election, so it looks quite eerie in retrospect - especially the clip towards the end of Caroline Kennedy presenting Gerald Ford with a Profile in Courage Award in 2001.