Julie Kelly explains in a Federalist column how a new documentary sheds light on the closing days of the Obama presidency.

In one shot in “The Final Year,” a documentary about President Obama’s national-security team during the last months of his presidency, the camera zooms in on a dead cockroach in the West Wing. An off-camera voice explains how the building is so old that roaches roam free and people can hear rats scurrying in the pipes overhead. Feel free to draw your own metaphors. …

… As the world implodes around them and the political landscape at home shifts in unforeseen ways, largely in protest to his reign, Obama and his advisors blithely find time to lavish praise on each other and themselves for the “arc of progress” they commanded over eight years. The film is a view into their collective incompetence, rooted in a combination of naiveté and smug superiority and fed with college-level platitudes about war, diplomacy, and engagement. Knowing how the story ends is the only thing that makes it tolerable to watch 90 minutes of their preening and moralizing. …

… The Obama administration’s focus on climate change was an egregious waste of tax money, talent, and political capital. To think that major international crises were bargaining chips to win support for a meaningless, costly climate pact is disgraceful. The film also shows Kerry doing the obligatory Al Gore photo-op, looking at floating icebergs, as if “extreme diplomacy” could stop them from melting.