{"id":13,"date":"2010-03-15T01:02:36","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T04:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2010-06-28T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T14:36:09","slug":"game-change-obama-and-the-clintons-mccain-and-palin-and-the-race-of-a-lifetime-by-john-heilemann-mark-halperin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann, Mark Halperin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Game  Change<\/em>, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman, tells the riveting (and  deeply fun) human story of the 2008 election&#8211;which was vastly more  dysfunctional than anyone knew.  As Halperin pointed out recently, it  gives one pause to realize that the Clintons had only the fourth most  dysfunctional marriage in the campaign: the Edwardses, the Giulianis and  the McCains all had exceedingly troubled unions.<\/p>\n<p>Screaming fights in front of the staff abound; spouses are jealous  of the candidates&#8217; relationships with their advisers; Bill Clinton  behaves like Bill Clinton; John Edwards blatantly carries on an affair;  and Elizabeth Edwards, in stark contrast to her public persona, seems to  be truly deplorable. And everyone swears incessantly. Only the  Obamas&#8211;though certainly not depicted as perfect&#8211;emerge as genuinely  likable characters.<\/p>\n<p>The candidates&#8217; styles were, not surprisingly, reflected in their  campaigns.  Clinton and McCain both ran operations in which the staff  despised each other, and McCain&#8217;s campaign lacked even the semblance of  real organization.  It is shocking that a presidential campaign can be  run this sloppily; <em>Game Change<\/em> observes that Sarah Palin was vetted so  hastily that it resembled the selection process for an assistant  secretary of agriculture, not a potential vice president. The authors  manage to evoke a certain amount of sympathy for Palin, who was put into  an enormous role for which she was not qualified, without any  preparation, or any organizational structure to back her up. The Obama  campaign, on the other hand, was run with tremendous efficiency by  people who respected each other and worked together like adults.<\/p>\n<p>By the end, with Edwards abandoned by his party and McCain&#8217;s  campaign widely ridiculed, it seems clear that Obama got exactly what he  deserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman, tells the riveting (and deeply fun) human story of the 2008 election&#8211;which was vastly more dysfunctional than anyone knew. As Halperin pointed out recently, it gives one pause to realize that the Clintons had only the fourth most dysfunctional marriage in the campaign: the Edwardses, the Giulianis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,6],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-nonfiction","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":913,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorinkleinman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}