I’m a little surprised by the wave of acclaim that has buoyed Game Change onto the top of the bestsellers’ list. The book was written by Mark Halperin, whose excellent work a few years ago on ABC News’s The Note revolutionized political coverage, and by John Heileman. Halperin now writes for Time; Heilemann, for New York magazine, and much has been made of the amount of shoe leather reporting these two undertook in interviewing 300 or so people for this book about the 2008 elections. It’s true that they uncovered lots of inside stuff, but I am not sure that it amounts to much. The much-discussed Harry Reid comment about Obama being light-skinned and speaking without a Negro dialect comes and goes in the story with so little consequence that I rather suspect that without the aid of tub-thumping publicist, the remark would have passed virtually unnoticed. What else? We learn that everyone in politics says fuck a lot. We get chapter and verse on the rivalries inside Hillary Clinton’s high command, but the number of people who care about the antics of these high school student council nerds (with one exception, to come) could fit in the palm of Chris Matthews’ hand. We learn that Elizabeth Edwards isn’t really nice and that John Edwards really isn’t decent, but the woman is dying and the guy is destroyed, and so there’s only so much pleasure to be gained from watching their immolation. There may be much that is new, as in not previously reported, but there is little that changes our views about people. Stlll, some good nuggets. “Jim Wilkinson, a longtime Republican operative, served as [Hank] Paulson’s chief of staff during the [financial] crisis, an his impression of the candidates could hardly have been clearer. “I’m a pro-life, pro-gun, Texas Republican,’’ says Wilkinson. “I worked all eight years for Bush. I helped sell the Iraq war. I was in the Florida recount. And I wrote a letter to John McCain asking for my five hundred dollar contribution back when he pulled that stunt and came back to D.C. Because it just wasn’t what a serious person does.’ To him amazement, Wilkinson determined that he would be voting for Obama.’’
What’s most weird is that the writers fail to extract a sense of drama from the most dramatic election in years. Obama moves through book unchanged, an amazingly composed and charismatic figure who rises to every occasion. The country’s plunge into a desperate financial crisis just weeks before the election becomes just another plot point. Obama aces the test, McCain chokes, but for all their interviews, the authors never deliver what was going on inside the heads of the candidates at this crucial moment.
One very odd thing: the authors devote two pages to an interview with Mark Penn, the widely disliked campaign guru whom many blame for Hillary Clinton’s strategic blunders in positioning herself and creating her message. (To be fair, many blame, and many are blamed, and there is much blame to go around.) But here Penn relates a personal conversation with Clinton in which she largely exonerates Penn. “It was just dysfunctional, and I take responsibility for that,’’ he quotes her as saying, before going on to say that the campaign was probably unwinnable anyway, and—here’s the grabber—that Penn’s rival Patti Solis Doyle was “a disaster’’ who “was in over her head.’’ Penn allows that Hillary told him that he rubbed people the wrong way and should seek therapy. Still, it’s an amazing example of self-serving and largely uncheckable quote that plops into the book virtually undigested.