Game Cange

Game change was the perfect antidote to the downer books I've been cycling through. The breezy romp through the 2008 campaign is perhaps a bit too gossipy for the likes of, say, my husband, but I learned a lot in a fun way. One unexpected outcome was that I came to understand Hillary Clinton and her motivation during the very ugly primary campaign when I--an unabashed Obama supporter--started to feel actual hatred toward the woman. Reading this book made me understand her a bit better. Heilemann and Halperin capture her as well as could be expected for such a complex character.
Edwards comes off as a delusional ass and I felt a bit dirty reading the sections on his campaign because the whole thing was awfully tawdry. The sections on McCain were sort of sad because he just seemed so lost (and yes, bitter, angry, old, confused, tired...). Sarah Palin came off as unhinged. I always thought she was vapid and undereducated, delusional, perhaps but I didn't realize she was borderline insane.

But this is an extremely honest book and even Obama, the eventual winner, is hauled into the light and his weaknesses exposed. Game Change was a great companion to David Plouffe's book (December 2009 post) Audacity to Win. Plouffe claimed he'd tried to write a clear-eyed, honest book, which I believe he did, but he was still kinder to Hillary Clinton and Obama (now Secretary of State and President, respectively, so he has to be kind of nice) than Heilemann and Halperin needed to be. Obama comes off as so confident as to border on arrogance. There are hints that his campaign did indeed indulge in some dirty tricks which Plouffe either glides over or exhonerates Obama of having any part in them. Still, as honest as the journalists are, the president still comes off well and certainly appears the best of the bunch in Game Change.

Reading this, I began to admire Hillary Clinton while I remained horrified by her blindness and vengefulness during the campaign. She comes off as smart, disciplined, driven, and as truly believing that Obama will not only be a bad president but will be eaten alive by the Republican machine come the general election. This helps explain why she stayed in so long. She truly believed she would be a better president (all bets are off as to how she feels now). On the other hand, she comes off as completely blind to the mood of people, she runs a terrible and dysfunctional campaign, and both she and Bill Clinton come off as petty and vengeful. She hates confrontation to the point that she fires her staff via email. There's a great scene to illustrate her unwillingness to take control of her own campaign and its flaws when her staff is trying to warn her of the damage Bill is inflicting on her campaign. It's the day after the debacle in South Carolina (where Bill Clinton is widely viewed as having injected race into the campaign) and Hillary's senior staff says, We have a problem. If you can't control your husband in the campaign, how are you going to control him as president?

"Well, someone will have to talk to him," Hillary said.

"YOU need to talk to him," the advisor replied.

"I can't talk to him," Hillary said.

After her surprise win in NH, Hillary chalks it up to going negative, something both she and Bill argue needs to be done more often. Everyone else, EVERYONE, chalks up that win to her softening up, especially with the tears in the cafe in Portsmouth, NH. (I didn't cry, [Hillary] kept insisting). Her staff tries to use the movie The Queen to explain what happened in NH. "You know how, at the end, Queen Elizabeth becomes sympathetic when she displays her humanity?...That's what happened in New Hampshire.

Hillary looked uncomprehendingly at [him], as if he were speaking Portuguese.

Obama, in contrast, just gets smarter with every loss (and win). By the time, he and McCain go to Washington to deal with the financial crisis, he is in full presidential mode, and is seen as such by his party. As soon as he clinched the nomination of his party, he convened a bunch of high level meetings on economics that were run like post-grad classes. Yes, he was cramming, but in direct contrast to the Republican nominee for VP who was cramming to understand why North Korea and South Korea were separate.

Heilemann and Halperin are as kind as they can be with Sarah Palin. She comes off as motivated, but completely out of her depth. She crams information like there's no tomorrow, writing everything onto index cards to such an extent that there are moments describing her as surrounded by unwieldy stacks of cards. Still, she only worked on things she liked (loved the meet and greet, hated preparing for the debate or the interviews). She is like a petulant child or a depressed person for most of the campaign, except when she's out among those who love her. She worked her rope lines hungrily...lingering over every hand she touched. Otherwise, Palin was demoralized, isolated, and confused. On her plane, when confronted with any uncomfortable topic by her advisers, she was still dropping her head and refusing to respond, even as they stood there awkwardly waiting for a reply.

If you'd been in a coma for a year and your only access to the campaign were this book, it becomes quickly apparent who will win. There's a real race between Hillary and Obama, but there's no such thing between McCain and Obama. McCain comes off as not really being up for the job, even by his own staff. It's a sad ending to watch such a man lose his way so publically. His private life was shocking to me, but I never harbored too many illusions about the man and anyone in a coma wouldn't be too surprised either.

Game Change is extremely well-written (except that they use the term "game change" way too much. There were several words I felt compelled to look up in the dictionary (I'm not trying to scare anyone off--this doesn't by any means imply it's written in an unpleasantly scholarly way) which was refreshing and in contrast to the occasional tell-all vibe.The level of access these reporters had is incredible. I leave readers to discover all the details and the funny bits. Enjoy.