The HBO movie Game Change, from the book of the same name, debuts Saturday night to a barrage of publicity. While both critics and criticism have focused on the two chapters of the book that deal with Sarah Palin, it's nearly impossible to avoid the implications of the most important—and disqualifying—decision John McCain made in 2008. Realizing that he was losing, McCain authorized the choice of Sarah Palin, a politician with no qualification for being a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Reviews suggest a somewhat sympathetic view of Palin, reaffirming that she was a great campaigner who brought needed electricity into the McCain camp while at the same time confirming that she was the political neanderthal we all took her to be. One of my favorite writers, James Wolcott, in Vanity Fair:
The chief reason to see Game Change (HBO, Saturday March 10th) is that it’s fun. It has nothing new or profound to say about the runaway train of a presidential campaign, it doesn’t have paint any rainy moments of a candidate’s somber reflection on the toll of his soul as the an aide prattles on the latest polls, it doesn’t peel any of the crab shell off of John McCain for a look under the psychological hood, or show us a side of Sarah Palin that will send us to the rewrite pages of history. It doesn’t drip oil from the ceiling like Ides of March, implicating everyone including the audience in collusion and corruption. It’s a slow-burn comedy of exasperation, finally blossoming into cursing frustration when Palin, the rock-star treatment from her rabid fans pumping her up into believing that she’s bigger than the campaign, wants to make her own concession speech the night of the losing election.
You can
watch McCain trash the film, or even take the trouble to bother to see
what Palin thinks ("the film doesn’t matter to her"). But the relevant comments come from
these two:
Other aides who worked on the campaign – campaign manager Steven Schmidt and top aide Nicolle Wallace – have said the film is a generally accurate portrayal of Sen. John McCain’s selection of Palin, whom they allege was emotionally and intellectually not up for the job.
Let's be clear: Palin is absolutely right. The film doesn't matter.
What matters is that John McCain picked someone so totally and completely unfit for the position of vice president. That disastrous decision disqualifies McCain for the position of "senior wise man" that he so loves to play. But what this choice tells us, reinforced by his behavior during the September 2008 financial meltdown, is that McCain's instincts are abysmal and his judgment is worse.
Why anyone would continue to take McCain seriously from a political standpoint is unanswerable. He's never going to live down this choice. And the reason he's so dismissive of the movie and the book is for all the right reasons: the chatter may be all about Palin, but the implications are all about McCain.
In fact, that's actually what happened in 2008, in case anyone has forgotten.