This is The End

Less than 48 hours before President Barack Obama leaves office, CNN will air an intimate tribute told through the workdays and accounts of key White House staff members. But however worthy it may be, this twohour documentary, airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST, may face a wary reception.

For those who have disagreed with Obama’s policies and even questioned his citizenship the past eight years, this film is unlikely at such a late date to stir a reappraisal of his legacy or character. Meanwhile, for others, the film will be yet another painful reminder of what will soon be over and what might have been.

The program strikes an elegiac chord with its title: The End: Inside the Last Days of the Obama White House. Spanning the past two months, The End ends, fittingly, with Obama’s farewell address last week in Chicago.

It begins on election day, as Hillary Clinton’s electoral-college defeat by Donald Trump is received at the White House with shock and grief. But then we see Obama bucking up his thunderstruck staff. “Everybody is sad when their side loses an election,” the president says. “But we all have to remember we’re all on one team.”

Chief speechwriter Cody Keenan, one of the figures followed through the documentary, crafted the president’s magnanimous remarks. He concedes those words are “obviously not the ones I wanted to be writing.”

Another recurring character, press secretary Josh Earnest, gathers his crew to prep for a news conference as they scramble for grounding. “Just don’t look at Twitter,” cracks one of his fellow writers and they all laugh. Nothing in particular is cited from the tweets Trump has made part of his routine. “That’s a good rule for life,” Earnest replies instead.

Along with tying up the many loose ends of Obama’s presidency, these busy last weeks are devoted to arranging an efficient, secure handoff to his successor. “Our job is to turn it over to them in as good a shape as possible,” says Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. (All agree that the transition team of president George W. Bush set a high standard the Obama administration aspires to meet as it vacates.)

But there are other, less weighty tasks. Keenan and his staff must hatch a collection of puns for Obama’s pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkeys (the Chief Executive can’t be expected to wing it). In a welcome antic moment, the fowl — Tater and Tot — are seen in their luxe D.C. accommodations: a suite at the Willard Intercontinental.

As the days count down, the film’s participants reflect on what they’ve experienced. Keenan recalls 2009 when Obama took office. He confides many White House newbies were alarmed. “The president was the one with the cool head who told us all, ‘Read some FDR (whose administration confronted the Great Depression and Second World War). See what he told people when it was bleak and when they were scared.”

The End, despite its good intentions, will strike some of its viewers as being less about the Obama era than about the two-month run-up to a change they dread that starts with Friday’s swearing-in.