Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

I heard an NPR interview with Mark Halperin and was enticed enough to read the book. I thought I did not want to revisit the election, but Halperin and Heilemann, who covered the election every day, said their post-election interviews recovered a lot much info they had not known. The worked their way through the primaries for both parties and the gradual sorting out of the candidates. The authors wrote about all of the key players behind the scenes and the details of the conventions. As we now know, John Edwards was seen as an “empty suit” by nearly everyone who knew him, and they talked about how much he had changed over the last 10 years, having been seduced by the limelight and by Reille Hudson, the woman with whom he had an affair and a baby. They wrote that Elizabeth Edwards was the woman who had the greatest discrepancy between her public image (a gracious, calm, good woman) and the reality of who she was (a vitriolic, screaming bitch). There was lots of info about the Clintons and Bill’s ongoing infidelities. Hillary openly admitted that she had no ability to control anything about Bill, either what he said or what he did. She said to her staff, “I can’ talk to him.” It was widely thought that Cindy McCain was having an affair, and John was thought to have had an affair with Vicki Iseman, and the leakage of all of that info to the NY Times is what led to Cindy actually staying with John through much of the campaign, something she did not want to do. The two of them argued openly and profanely in front of their staff. Guiliani and his third wife, Judi, were “The operatic piece of psychotropic theater that was the Rudy and Judi Show.” Then, there was a review of all of the Sarah Palin crap. In the end, McCain’s thinking was that if he was to have any chance in the election, that he had to take a risk on a game-changer, and there was no one else who filled that bill. Serious thought was given to using Lieberman, but he had too many positions that were against the right wing of the party (pro-choice, anti-NRA, etc.). McCain could have made conservative and good choices of people who were capable, but who would have just been predictable, ho-hum candidates. He really did not know Palin. No one did, but he felt pressured to make a decision because of the timing of the Republican convention and his wish to take the air out of Obama’s sails after the end of the Democratic convention. I thought I was tired of it, but the authors had some new info and the replay of the day-to-day Palin disaster was quite good. At one point, as Palin was imploding, he-was-still-a-Democrat Lieberman, was brought into boost Palin’s spirit by talking with her about religion, and she said to him, “Joe, I can’t figure any other reason I’m here except that I was meant to be here.” OMG, and a fun read.

WC Don