Obama and the Clintons McCain and Palin Game Change

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (Hardcover)







Authors John Heilemann, Mark Halperin

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Product Description
In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country’s leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns.

Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character-driven and dialogue-rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, it’s an intimate portrait of some of the most powerful and fascinating figures in American life—the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

Product Details
# Hardcover: 464 pages
# Publisher: Harper; X edition (January 11, 2010)
# Language: English

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Reviews Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime


The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endorsement, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said,' A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.' "

The McCain-Palin camp was afraid that Sarah Palin would screw things up because of the tremendous amount of information she needed to debate Biden. "The debate was going to be a debacle of historic and epic proportions...she was not focused...not engaged." She was not really participating in the prep, the authors add.

Sidebar:

In a recent news article Palin's spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, said in a statement: "The Governor's descriptions of these events are found in her book, 'Going Rogue.' Her descriptions are accurate. She was there. These reporters were not." Stapleton was talking about what was said about Palin in this book by the authors.

and then . . .

McCain aides confront Cindy McCain over reports that she had an extramarital affair.

The authors tell us that Hillary Clinton was so confident she would get the Democratic nomination that she had two top advisers planning her transition for after she won the general election.

They also point out that up until only days before the Republican Convention, Sen. John McCain was still thinking Sen. Joe Lieberman would be his running mate, until the "blowback" was so strong, they feared Lieberman would be rejected by the party, forcing the last-minute choice of Palin for the role.

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's former chief campaign strategist believes the Obama-Biden victory would have been even more lopsided without Palin on the Republican ticket, according to the book.

On John Edwards . . .

John Edwards went from being typically conceited to having megalomania. Women were always after him. He loved it and it fed his enormous ego. But it was also a problem for the campaign.

Edwards thought the contest would be between him and Hillary. The Clinton camp thought the same thing.

Edwards was normally warm to his staff. But he turned disdainful. He ignored and dismissed them. He even mistreated both staff and supporters. "You can't talk to people that way, "an aid told him after one of his displays. "People didn't like the new John Edwards."

Surprisingly, Elizabeth Edwards was fast to show John that she was his intellectual superior. She called him a "hick" in front of people and derided him for having "redneck parents." She called some staffers idiots. Her illness mellowed her in the early months of 2005 - but not for long.

While John's wife may have made him feel small, his new gal pal made him feel like a king. She told him that he had "the power to change the world," that "the people will follow you." She told him that he could be as great a leader as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. She told him, "You're so real. You just need to get your staff out of your way." She reinforced everything he already believed about himself. She told him exactly what he wanted and needed to hear.

No one gets off free in the book. The authors tell us that Senate Majority Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had referred privately to Barack Obama early in his campaign as a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."