Literature / Game Change

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Game Change is the 2010 book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin that documents the 2008 race between Barack Obama and John McCain, and the events leading up to it.

It covers all the major events of the campaign, with most of the focus on the contentious Democratic primaries, in particular the fight between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. In addition, it offers startling and perceptive insights into the behind-the-scenes drama during the election — Obama’s attempts to remain in the race; the Clintons’ increasing ire at the media for its soft coverage of Obama; the complete destruction of Edwards’ campaign and marriage before, during and after his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter; the last-minute switch-out of Joe Lieberman with Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee; and the increasing chaos of the McCain campaign after the financial crisis, and through it all the constant interplay and threats of racism and sexism.

A TV film based on the book, primarily focusing on Sarah Palin, aired on HBO in 2012. It starred Julianne Moore as Palin, Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, and Ed Harris as John McCain.

The book features examples of:

• Awful Wedded Life:
  • Between John and Elizabeth Edwards, despite their best efforts to pretend otherwise.
  • Between Rudy Giuliani and his third wife, Judith.
  • John and Cindy McCain's wedded life isn't awful all the time, but they can get into some pretty epic fights.
• Battle Couple: Bill and Hillary.
• Berserk Button: Bill Clinton is a patient, wizardly figure in Hillary's campaign; a master of the rules of politics like no other. But during the primaries, he is repeatedly hammered by former friends and a media, which he is convinced is in the tank for Obama, for supposedly playing the race card. The final straw is when a reporter in South Carolina suggests that he is using similar tactics to Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush's infamous 1988 campaign manager, who created the infamous Willie Horton ad. Bill loses it at this point, forgoing his own rules and berating the reporter for a solid five minutes, leading to the famous "shame on you" incident.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Elizabeth Edwards, despite her public sickly persona.
• The Chosen One: Obama to the Clintons and McCains, who were so irritated by the media's soft handling of him they felt it was borderline Villain with Good Publicity.
• Critical Backlash: invoked Despite the McCains' efforts to keep it secret, word got out that Joe Lieberman was set to be McCain's running mate, setting off anguished cries of the end of conservatism as conservatives knew it.
• Defeat Means Friendship: The Clintons managed to put aside their initial dislike of Obama and support him in the coming election. Hillary even made a surprise visit on the Democratic Convention floor asking the convention to declare together that Obama would be their candidate and president. It should be noted that subsequently, Obama even made Hillary his Secretary of State. As she explained it, she was surprised when she received his phone call offering the position, and warned him that due to the previous scandals surrounding her husband, the media would use her presence in his cabinet as further ammunition to criticize him. Obama responded that he was aware of what her ties to Bill Clinton would bring, but he was still offering the job, because he genuinely needed someone of her expertise in such an important position. She was genuinely touched, and they apparently had a good working relationship afterwards.
• Enemy Mine: McCain ended up employing people from Bush's campaigns, despite the fact that they ran extremely nasty smears against him during the 2000 primaries, including claiming his adopted daughter from Bangladesh was really his illegitimate child.
• Foregone Conclusion: Everyone knows who won in the end.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Mitt Romney is this among the Republican candidates, who regard him as a flip-flopping opportunist with no real convictions.
• Knight in Shining Armor: McCain wanted to be this (or at least present himself as this) when he suspended his campaign and rushed back to Washington, D.C. to ensure that Congress passed legislation to prevent the impending financial crisis. Instead, he was flustered to find that the bipartisan committee had all but finished the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bill, and demanded that they start over (at a time when the entire federal government was racing against the clock to prevent financial Armageddon), then sat through the meetings like a clueless bystander, while Obama (who had also returned to Washington) virtually presided over them. One of McCain's long-time friends summed up, "If you're going to come riding into Washington on a white horse to slay a dragon, you better have the dragon tied up and tranquilized and ready to die. You don't come in and not slay the dragon and walk out with a whimper."
  • Even George W. Bush, who was at least willing to hear his former rival out, seemed angry and embarrassed that McCain wasted everyone's time, and was also impressed at Obama's insight on the matter.
• Lesser of Two Evils: During the last months of the campaign, one of Obama's pollsters, David Binder, visited a group of undecided voters in Cleveland, Ohio. One woman stated that she and the rest of the group believed most of the conspiracy theories about Obama: that he was not born in the United States, that he was actually a Muslim, and being a Muslim made him secretly sympathetic to terrorists. In some bewilderment, Binder asked if that was the case how could they be "undecided"? The woman explained that they were still weighing whether electing a foreign, Islamic, terrorist sympathizer might be less dangerous than putting Sarah Palin in line to become the next President, if something happened to McCain.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: An extremely disturbing Real Life example with Rielle Hunter to John Edwards:
  • She was fascinated with New Age philosophy, astrology and reincarnation, and would announce to people she had just met that she was a witch.
  • She also pumped Edwards up, claiming he could be as great a leader as Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi.
  • Other Edwards campaign team members who were interviewed describe how she insinuated herself into the entire campaign, becoming Edwards's constant companion - when she had just been hired to run a documentary film crew about the campaign. To this day, that video has never been publicly released, despite the fact that it was the one job that Rielle was officially supposed to be doing. The reason why is that the other campaign team members state that when they watched the rough cut, Hunter and Edwards were clearly flirting throughout it. Pause a moment and ask yourself:
    • 1 - How blatantly obvious must their flirting have been that even a TV audience that didn't know them personally would pick up on it?
    • 2 - This is the video Hunter herself submitted to them: she had become so removed from reality that she gave them a final cut of a video in which she was obviously flirting with Edwards, with zero thought to the consequences.
    • For that matter, Edwards also knew in most of these shots that he was on camera - but he was so wrapped up in Hunter's praise that he didn't even think to stop flirting with her.
• Meet the New Boss: A common accusation thrown at McCain was that he would be Bush Lite.
• Mistaken for Cheating: A rumor circulates that McCain has had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Both of them categorically deny so much as ever being alone together. ^note  Though Schmidt confirmed years later that they did indeed.
• Narcissist: John Edwards is portrayed as one of these: He lets crowd reactions go straight to his head, and he lets Rielle Hunter's constant praise go straight to his... other head.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: One of the moments of high drama during the campaign occurred when McCain demanded that the debate with Obama be postponed, so McCain could return to Washington and help shepherd through legislation to address the financial crisis. It was intended to be a grand gesture of setting aside partisan politics for the good of the country as a whole, but it misfired badly:
  • The very act of suspending his campaign to return to Washington only increased public nervousness, undermined confidence in the already-shaky market, and accelerated the collapse that the federal government was trying so desperately to prevent;
  • When he arrived in Washington, McCain was aggravated to learn that the bipartisan committee had all but finished hammering out the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and demanded that the Republican representatives scrap the bill and start over - either because he needed to claim some credit for getting the legislation done, or because he took it for granted that any "progress" made by other representatives without his input was meaningless, or both;
  • Insofar as he did sit in on the continuing TARP negotiations, most of the attendees were struck by how unprepared McCain was, and how little he had to contribute in the way of practical suggestions - especially compared to Obama, who was also a sitting Senator and had also returned to Washington after the debate was canceled; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's Chief of Staff, Jim Wilkinson, had already donated $500 to McCain's campaign, but after the TARP debacle, he asked for his money back, and cast his vote for Obama;
  • In McCain's absence, Palin was thrust onto center stage, further highlighting how ignorant she was of national issues; in the film, when Schmidt tries to prepare her for questions about how the government is responding to the crisis, he has to start from scratch and explain to her (among other things) what the Federal Reserve does.
• Rage Breaking Point: Hillary puts up with a lot of nonsense during the primaries, but the worst is when MSNBC's David Shuster remarks that her daughter, who has been reportedly calling some unconfirmed delegates, seems to be being "pimped out" on her mother's behalf. This makes Hillary's inner Mama Bear come out in full force.
• Sore Loser: Hillary doesn't even acknowledge when Obama clinches the number of delegate votes needed for the Democratic nomination, instead giving a speech that suggests she still has a chance to win.
• Taking the Heat: Edwards' Sycophantic Servant Andrew Young claims he was the one who had an affair with Hunter resulting in her pregnancy. Nobody buys it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: invoked Once it became inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic nominee over Hillary, many of her followers declared they would go with McCain, who increased their support once he chose Sarah Palin.
• True Companions: All the campaigns started out with one. 👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  Only Obama's survived.
• The Unchosen One: Sarah Palin; McCain's original pick for VP was Joe Lieberman.