Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My father got me this book; he was really enjoying it and wanted to know what I thought. After reading it I see that he didn’t really want someone to talk with, he wanted someone to gossip with. Now it’s true, once I started it I couldn’t put it down. That’s because it’s like The West Wing, but real life. Well, and in a book. The rubber-necker in me really wanted to know how Hillary took to Obama’s absurdly quick rise to national prominence and, most of all, exactly what thought process lead to Sarah Palin as the VP nominee. And, as well as it can, this book delivers. Most of the quote are unattributed and the sources are unnamed, but he fact that this book has gotten as much publicity as it has without anyone raising their hackles at it leads me to believe that the reporting is right on. And what reporting it must have taken to piece together all the information it took to make this book. The authors conducted over 200 interviews.
The news cycle being what it is, all of the events in this book seem like they are in the distant past. While reading it, I was constantly being struck by just how amazing the last presidential race was. The knock down drag out Democratic nomination. McCain’s amazing comeback. The release of Sarah Palin . The economic meltdown. Let alone the fact that however you cut it, this was a race of epically historic proportions. I was constantly amazed that I lived through this.
In the end nobody comes out of this looking good. The entitlement assumed by the Clintons is staggering. Hillary was putting together a transition team, in charge of moving her and her staff into the White House, before she had even secured the nomination. McCain’s selection of Palin is almost painful to read about. She was selected to be a media ‘wow’ moment, and her debut at the RNC was all that and more, but when it became clear that she was not ready for a national campaign and had no idea what she was getting into when she said yes she was abandoned by the main campaign. And then there is the crazy story of the downfall of John Edwards. whew.
Although it comes in at just over 430 pages this book felt like a surface level read. It spends most of its time on the Democratic nomination fight. The pages dedicated to the Republican nomination seem cursory at best. I was left wanting so much more. It just scrapes the surface of almost every topic it touches. There should be dissertations written about Obama’s fundraising machine and McCain’s campaign belly-flop. There probably will be and I look forward to reading those too.
Tags: books