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Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I should note right off the bat that my guy won the election of 2008, and so knowing that may have colored what I thought of this book.
That said, Game Change combined two great loves of my life: Politics and gossip, and so my love for it was inevitable. The story is told omnisciently, its threads gathered through anonymous interviews and e-mails and so forth. The authors are quite direct about what is directly quoted and what is paraphrased, so while grains of salt may be warranted at times, I don't believe one would be embarrassed using this book as a source of information at a dinner party.
The two stories of the primaries -- the Republican side follows the Democratic side -- are told separately, and then the third part of the book tackles the general election. I was a little disappointed by two aspects:
1. The minutiae of the night of the Iowa caucuses are covered, but not the moment. That was a pretty huge night, but the emotions of it and what it meant historically seemed glossed over to me.
2. I would have liked to have seen more about the rise and falls of Sarah Palin and John Edwards. Both are drawn to be rather... well, their grips on reality aren't described as being the strongest. Edwards' storyline just kind of drops away from the book until the Afterword, and nothing is mentioned about Palin's request (denied) to make a speech before McCain's concession speech. I would have liked to have known exactly what happened back stage that night (maybe it's just me wanting to dance on the grave of the defeated, though*).
All in all, a very fast moving, interesting, and amusing story that paints everyone involved as everyday people. And, after having read it, you get a sense of why it was so easy for Biden to drop the famous "this is a big f--king deal" on a live mic.
*Please note that when I'm writing this, everyone, as far as I know, is alive and so this metaphor is not distasteful.
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