Game Change audiobook

Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman, tells the riveting (and deeply fun) human story of the 2008 election--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. Screaming fights in front of the staff abound; spouses are jealous of the candidates' 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--though certainly not depicted as perfect--emerge as genuinely likable characters.The candidates' styles were, not surprisingly, reflected in their campaigns. Clinton and McCain both ran operations in which the staff despised each other, and McCain's campaign lacked even the semblance of real organization. It is shocking that a presidential campaign can be run this sloppily; Game Change 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 that she was not qualified for, 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.By the end, with Edwards abandoned by his party and McCain's campaign widely ridiculed, it seems clear that Obama got exactly what he deserved.

Imagine a reality TV show that is one-third strategy, one-third destiny, and one-third spectacle. A show that chronicles the brutal race for the most powerful office in the world, and that features bigger-than-life personalities - all of whom could star in a Shakespearean play, and some of whom, a Jerry Springer special. Now envision yourself curled up on a couch next to a roaring fire on a rain-drenched night watching this TV show with a big bowl of buttery popcorn and a mug of made-from-scratch-with-whole-milk hot chocolate. Are you with me? Are you sensing the intense pleasure of all this? I hope so. Because that’s Game Change. A behind-the-scenes look at the major players of the 2008 Presidential election, this book was riveting and compelling and all the other adjectives you find on the back cover of bestsellers. The seasoned journalists who conducted the 400+ interviews and wrote the book clearly know a good story when they see one. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when Hillary met secretly with Obama to discuss the terms of her withdrawal from the race? (She asked for help to pay her campaign debts and he declined.) Who wouldn’t want a peek inside McCain’s mind when he tapped Sarah Palin to be his running mate? (She was literally a last-minute decision.) A couple warnings. First. If you’re a Palin-loving Tea Party member or a diehard Bill Clinton democrat you won’t like how your icons are portrayed. If you're an Obama-hater you won't like how he's portrayed either. I’m none of the above so the book didn’t bother me. Second. All the candidates need to carry a bar of soap next to their Blackberries so they can wash their mouths out. I was surprised by their language. The worst culprit, McCain, has such a fondness for the f-word I skipped entire sentences. But even with their language issues the candidates and their spouses make for world-class people-watching. So go ahead. Indulge yourself and read the book. You are welcome to borrow my copy, but only on one condition: after you read it you have to come over to my house. We’ll make a big bowl of buttery popcorn and some killer hot chocolate and talk politics and personalities for hours. I’ll even light a fire and pray for rain. I can’t wait.

a thrilling, terribly fun read---a gossipy, soapy treat for anyone who avidly followed the 2008 presidential campaign and is already familiar with the larger-than-life personalities here on display. many readers have complained that Game Change offers no policy discussion while gossip reigns supreme. well, they're right, but i think that's exactly what the authors set out to do, and i for one adored it. if you want a wonkish, in-depth review of each candidate's philosophical underpinnings and positions on varying policies, look elsewhere.instead, Game Change follows the obama, clinton, edwards, and mccain campaigns behind the scenes in a detailed play-by-play from each candidate's declaration of candidacy up 'til november 4. hundreds of deep-background interviews with aides, staff, friends, and the candidates themselves create a vivid, eminently readable account of the four teams and the culture and coverage of the campaigns that emerged in 2006, 2007, and 2008. frankly, i was shocked at the levels of dysfunction in every single campaign except the obamans': these other three candidates were alternately bullies, narcissists, or self-deluded, and both mccain and edwards were appallingly laissez-faire about almost every aspect of their campaigns, preferring to let their staff make both minute and substantive decisions, and riding the wave to the nomination on gut instinct or self-regard, respectively. *** BEGIN SUPER-LONG POINT-BY-POINT ***particularly shocking to me, though, was hillary clinton's inability to make a decision when the stakes were high. her waffling about myriad major and minor issues cost her dearly in her race against obama and frankly sunk her pretty considerably in my esteem. her capacity for self-deception surprised me---she appears to suffer a bizarrely codependent, mutually fawning relationship with bill, where evidence of his infidelities or the damage he was doing to her campaign were continuously excused or simply flat-out ignored. (NOW i understand how she and bill are together while tipper and al are shockingly split: hillary refuses to see what's in front of her, idolizes bill, and has decided that being with him and in pain is better than being without him and his shenanigans.) in the end, her toughness was paramount---the very quality that got her through the scathing criticism she suffered during her husband's years in the white house (not least of all the humiliation surrounding the lewinski scandal), a bitter, two-year race against obama for the nomination, and, surprisingly and beautifully, allowed her in the end to see the efficacy in accepting obama's offer for secretary of state. she's a fierce, flawed, brilliant woman with metric tons of baggage. i know a lot of us have been flirting with the dreamy notion of her running in 2016, but after having read about her 2008 campaign, i can't say i'm any longer on board and wouldn't mind seeing her go softly into the night after she steps down as secretary of state at the end of obama's first (we hope) term.as for john edwards, to a one the other candidates and their aides found him phony and shallow. i remember during the campaign having no strong feeling about him one way or the other but admiring his stance on poverty; but my husband from the get-go said, "this guy is completely fake; he's an absolute fraud," which i found fascinating but didn't sway me from my neutral stance. i don't know how my husband sensed it, but his instincts were right on, while i remained ambivalent and thousands of others, some including my deeply intelligent, thoughtful friends, were snowed and thought they saw something of bobby kennedy in him. i'm stunned at how selfish and deluded this guy was, holding out until the eleventh hour for a sweet cabinet appointment that never came, all the while his mistress and their newborn daughter were secreted away, just waiting to become a major scandal that would have absolutely shredded his party's chances at a general-election win. what a completely self-absorbed cad. the levels of his self-regard are almost pathological. the party, and politics in general, is vastly improved with edwards completely neutered.john mccain was a gruff, snapping, curmudgeonly bully who routinely grossly verbally abused his staff and wife and preferred to ad-lib rather than analyze in almost any situation, relying on his perceived ability to coax compromise in situ rather than plan ahead for it. he was the reason his campaign was dead on its feet from the beginning, refusing to raise cash for it, bankrupting it almost right away. he squandered his months-long lead over obama after clinching his party's nomination, doing nothing to pull ahead in the polls while he had an entire summer to plan and execute as obama battled hillary. mccain had, as the book put it, as long as any candidate in history has enjoyed to determine his running mate and yet managed to completely bungle that process, completely inadequately vetting sarah palin and rushing her selection over approximately four days' time. while philosophically mccain and bush 2 may be fairly divergent, in executive capacity they appear to be similarly handicapped. appalling. in the end, while i remain greatly relieved that sarah palin isn't our vice president, the book actually made me feel quite sorry for her. she was terribly used by the mccain campaign: their rush and hustle, their failure to plan and give her adequate prep time and space to settle into the ticket and its responsibilities, and ex post facto their throwing her under the bus when she then failed to deliver cut her off at the knees. boo, mccain. huge, huge boo. that said, i still completely fault palin for having accepted the position. that she was so woefully ignorant of the most basic history and policy and that she had such limited capacity to productively handle prolonged stress but even so serenely and instantly agreed to be mccain's running mate speaks of a level of self-delusion that is frankly horrifying for a person with so much responsibility. though i still cringe whenever i accidentally hear her pontificate on fox, i'm so, so grateful that she quit the governorship of alaska, and i remain hopeful that she will never, ever hold a political seat again. obama the candidate, obama the man, and his team's incredible organization and creativity came out best in this narration. his even temper; apparently healthy, functional, mutually devoted family; ability to make tough judgment calls; and propensity to carefully analyze data and determine a course of action all do much to explain why he won the race and make me continually gleeful about it. according to interviews, he only really lost it once during the entire campaign, when his running mate, biden, told the press that within six months of taking the oath of office obama would face a catastrophic decision. it appears that biden's gaffe froze tensions between the two for months until an aide convinced the to-be-veep that an apology would be appropriate. but as soon as the two conversed, they seemed able to completely drop any tension, work productively together, and increase their mutual regard. they behaved as adults, in other words. similarly, as soon as the white house was in his sights, obama was able to let his antipathy for hillary dissipate and his regard for her toughness and mental agility reemerge, and he didn't let their bitter recent history cloud his judgment when determining who would make an excellent secretary of state. to his immense credit, he convinced her to join his cabinet, and we all have seen what an excellent decision that was. and by all accounts, theirs remains a productive, rancor-free collaboration to this day. the mccain and clinton campaigns both routinely criticized the press for giving obama pass after pass and celebrating him where they ought to have been more critical. while the book made it clear that this was the pervasive view outside of obama's team, the book didn't really say WHERE this was the case, in which circumstances the press let an important story slide, failed to do due diligence. but perhaps that was the authors' point---that though the accusation was leveled, it didn't have much of a provable basis. or perhaps it was the authors' failure to analyze. i admit, as a fervent obama supporter, that this narration pretty readily aligned with my expectations regarding the candidate, so another, less-biased, reader might more easily ascertain the narrative's weaker points. i'll have to continue to consider this.i will say that i was struck by the almost uniformly bad behavior of the women whose stories were told---hillary clinton, sarah palin, elizabeth edwards, and, to a much lesser extent, cindy mccain. only michelle obama escaped harsh criticism, coming off as sharp and independently minded and pretty suspicious of the entire campaign game. clinton, palin, and edwards were each pilloried for being borderline mentally unhinged, self-pitying, and at times irrational. edwards was painted as a ball buster. palin's account did nothing to disprove that she wasn't much more than a pretty face. clinton was waffling and willingly ill-used by her husband. could it be that these women, to greater or lesser extents, enjoyed better images and popularity than they did actual virtue? or were the authors harsher with them than they were their male counterparts, holding the women to a different standard altogether? why at his worst moments was john mccain painted as vitriolic while elizabeth edwards was emasculating? palin unhinged but obama dispirited? the dichotomy struck me as i read, but i'd frankly need to do a tougher, closer reread while surveying some outside sources before i comfortably drew conclusions about the authors' unwitting (i assume) sexism, verging on misogyny. but let it be noted that the bad behavior of the women went to their mental health while that of the men was merely unseemly.so, students of campaign history, viewers of cable news, anyone who showed up at an ampitheater five hours in advance to see their preferred candidate, ignore your Tivoed Gossip Girls episodes and instead delve into this juicy, fast-paced gossip-fest about some of the biggest, baddest, most-enthralling political personalities extant.

This book is in the tradition of Theodore White's great Making of a President series, which I devoured years ago as soon as they appeared, on the inside story of presidential campaigns. This one is just as good, high praise, indeed.Another great example of how we are failed by the media and need to learn details a coujple of years after the fact. Fascinating details such as how many Senators were urging Obama to run. The field looked weak. Edwards was considered shallow, Gofre was not interested, no one else particularly strong around except Hillary and they were terrified because if she had gotten the nomination, all the increasingly common rumors of Bill's continued infidelities would surface. Not to mention her vote on the war. It was also clear that her campaign staff, while very loyal, was not as good as one would have liked.Clearly, the Clinton campaign presumed to believe the nomination was theirs, and Hillary had even put together a transition staff already in October of 2007. The only thing, she believed standing in their way was Iowa, and they didn't expect to lose that state. Axelrod believed correctly that Mark Penn, Clinton's campaign manager, was locked into a strategy borrowed from the 1990 succesful campaign and wqould be unable to change even though times had changed drstically. Iowa was a game changer: Obama slaughterd the opposition and Huckabee came out of nowhere to beat the other front-runners. Clinton had spent more than $23 million on Iowa, more than $500,00 per vote obtained. It was also becoming abundantly clear that two major factors were preventing Hillary from doing better: her dysfunctional campaign that she seemed unable to organize or control; and Bill, an out-of-control ex-president who could not bear the idea of being out of the limelight. Hillary had difficulty dealing with personnel issues and was reluctant to deal with problems directly (one wonders how that might have translated to her administration had she won.) In fact, when a staffer asked her to deal with Bill and control him, she wanted to delegate that to someone else, arguing she couldn't do it. All of the candidates assiduously courted the Kennedy endorsement. They had long ties to the Clintons, but Edward Kennedy and his family were charmed by the similarities Obama had to their fallen icon JFK: the hope, the charisma, the intelligence, and wonderful speech-making. Bill Clinton, on one of his trips to the Kennedy compound to gain support, nailed his own -- and his wife's -- chances for success, by remarking during a discussion with Teddy refering to Obama's age, and perhaps totally losing any subconscious symbolism, that "just a few years ago, that boy would have been serving us the coffee." That remark totally offended Edward Kennedy.Meanwhile, the McCain campaign was suffering from a candidate who wasn't that popular with the Repoublican base and who knew it. "Why would I want to be the leader of a party of such assholes," he said. His stance on amnesty for undocumented workers was anathema to the right, and he had difficulty mustering any kind of enthusiam for a protracted campaign especially after what the Bush folks had done to him in South Carolina in 2000. At one point during a debate prep session, McCain was asked to explain the difference between same-sex marriage and civil unions. Tired of everything, he shouted, "I don't give a fuck." The choice of Palin was a last ditch, unplanned, and very unprepared for attempt at revival. He worked to some extent, energizing the base. But it also lost support for McCain from moderate Republicans, many of them long-time supporters of McCain, who saw the move as a slap in the face. They viewed her as clearly unprepared to be president, and, as one large campaign donor and long-time supporter of McCain explained his switch to Obama simply by saying: "Palin."

I never imagined I'd read this book much less give it five stars. My contempt for sniveling co-author Mark Halperin could not be exaggerated and I wasn't sure I could stomach the treatment he would give the 2008 election. Plus, I knew this story. I had watched it unfold in realtime with an attention that bordered on obsessive-compulsive. However, from the first several pages, I confess I was spellbound.Game Change is the almost lyrical, detailed account of the 2008 primaries and general election. The story is told in the format of a novel and boasts a dramatis personae worthy of any Shakespearian play. Supplemented by exhaustively researched details and an intensity of perspective impossible in our ADHD media cycle, Game Change is the story of the 2008 election that we all witnessed, but is somehow much more.Authors Halperin and Heilemann take the reader right into the private conversations candidates had with their aides and advisors prior to every decision and after every debacle. In one scene, they take us right into the bathroom where the Republican nominees stand elbow to elbow at a row of urinals, laughing and joking minutes before a debate. Much time is given to the stories we know: the Reverend Wright debacle, the Edwards affair with Rielle Hunter, the growing animus between the Clintons and Obama, the McCain camp's frenzied damage-control over Sarah Palin. However, the depth of private detail and development of the characters rendered by the authors made the story seem fresh and at times shocking. The financial collapse of September 2008 serves as a dramatic climax in which all players true colors are shown and the point of no return is irrevocably passed. These are politicians we came to know through the stage-managing of their handlers as well as their conduct in the public eye; seen through the lens of Halperin and Heilemann they seem like regular people though with extraordinary gifts and extraordinary vices. No person emerges unscathed, though some come out far worse than others. (Both Edwards come out as mentally-unbalanced sociopaths.) Plus, everyone cusses a lot more than you would imagine and that makes it pretty funny too. The book concludes beautifully, not with Obama's historic inauguration, but with a private interaction between Hillary and Obama as he presses her to take the Secretary of State job. What is revealed about these complex individuals in that moment goes a long way in recasting the narrative that had been built around them in an entirely new light.Man, this was an awesome book.

This book is without qualification the best book about politics I've ever read. Every single page is juicy and fascinating. There are so many hilarious and illuminating tidbits about Obama, Clinton, Palin, McCain, Edwards, and all the other major players in the 2008 presidential election that I won't even bother to cite examples - if you are interested AT ALL, just read this book now. Reading back over that paragraph I realize that it sounds a little over the top. Seriously, though...such a good read and so addictive that I want to read ten more books just like this one as soon as possible. The one thing I was surprised by was that after a backstage look at all of these people, Obama and Michelle come off as the most normal and likable by far (though it did make me feel for Hillary, especially considering how crazy Bill Clinton can be at times).I listened to the downloadable audiobook and narrator Dennis Boutsikaris is great. He manages to add touches of phrasing and just very slight accents that conjure up the feel of the various politicians who are quoted throughout the book. He doesn't do impressions AT ALL, just really subtle vocal shifts that work really well.

Fascinating insider account of the Presidential Election. Clinton's fury that the media didn't focus on Obomas use of cocaine, Hilarious account of Bill Clinton trying to get Ted Kennedy to endorse Hillary and saying, "you know 10 years ago he(Oboma) would have been waiting on our table."The language used by all candidates is more suited to sailors on leave.

My father got me this book; he was really enjoying it and wanted to know what I thought. After reading it I see that he didn't really want someone to talk with, he wanted someone to gossip with. Now it's true, once I started it I couldn't put it down. That's because it's like The West Wing, but real life. Well, and in a book. The rubber-necker in me really wanted to know how Hillary took to Obama's absurdly quick rise to national prominence and, most of all, exactly what thought process lead to Sarah Palin as the VP nominee. And, as well as it can, this book delivers. Most of the quote are unattributed and the sources are unnamed, but he fact that this book has gotten as much publicity as it has without anyone raising their hackles at it leads me to believe that the reporting is right on. And what reporting it must have taken to piece together all the information it took to make this book. The authors conducted over 200 interviews.The news cycle being what it is, all of the events in this book seem like they are in the distant past. While reading it, I was constantly being struck by just how amazing the last presidential race was. The knock down drag out Democratic nomination. McCain's amazing comeback. The release of Sarah Palin . The economic meltdown. Let alone the fact that however you cut it, this was a race of epically historic proportions. I was constantly amazed that I lived through this.In the end nobody comes out of this looking good. The entitlement assumed by the Clintons is staggering. Hillary was putting together a transition team, in charge of moving her and her staff into the White House, before she had even secured the nomination. McCain's selection of Palin is almost painful to read about. She was selected to be a media 'wow' moment, and her debut at the RNC was all that and more, but when it became clear that she was not ready for a national campaign and had no idea what she was getting into when she said yes she was abandoned by the main campaign. And then there is the crazy story of the downfall of John Edwards. whew.Although it comes in at just over 430 pages this book felt like a surface level read. It spends most of its time on the Democratic nomination fight. The pages dedicated to the Republican nomination seem cursory at best. I was left wanting so much more. It just scrapes the surface of almost every topic it touches. There should be dissertations written about Obama's fundraising machine and McCain's campaign belly-flop. There probably will be and I look forward to reading those too.

If Hollywood Central Casting were asked to put together a group of actors with the most monstrous egos on the face of the planet, they could not have done a better job than the two national parties did in the last election. So forget about everything you know about McCain and Palin, Clinton and Obama, Edwards and Giuliani. The truth is actually worse. Far worse. Game Change goes ahead and deliciously details all the backbiting, sex, lies, and self-destructions of the most dissected presidential campaign in history. It’s jaw dropping, gripping, and guaranteed to keep you reading late into the night. Here are just a few of the revelations:SARAH PALIN was the most colossally unprepared candidate ever to grace the national arena. “She couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations. She didn’t know what the Fed did. Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times it was Saddam Hussein.” And her mental state was so precarious that at one point, John McCain actually had his doctor observe her.JOHN EDWARDS was such a blowhard egotist that he angled for a position as VP or Attorney General, all the while knowing that Rielle Hunter was eight months pregnant and the story could break at any time.JOHN MCCAIN was so disengaged and shoot-from-the-hip in style that GEORGE BUSH wondered about his ability to lead the nation. He vetted Palin for the second most important job in the nation in under 72 hours and barely knew her. Oh, and when he wanted to relax? He’d watch the infamous YouTube posting of John Edwards preening to the sounds of I Feel Pretty.HILLARY CLINTON was barely able to control her husband and his intemperate telephonic and in-person outbursts. Oh, and that speech she delivered at the convention anointing Obama? Bill rewrote it behind her back just hours before she was supposed to deliver it.The authors, Heilemann and Halperin reveal it all in this spicy smorgasbord: the friction between Obama and his garrulous vice presidential pick…Obama’s own tendency toward conceit and coldness…Hillary’s initial rejection of Obama’s Secretary of State offer…the perilous state of the marriage of John and Elizabeth Edwards. It’s so compulsively readable that I finished 400 pages in just two days. This is truly “must read” for anyone interested in politics.

1) As much as it pains me to say it, Obama was probably the best choice available in 2008. But it was a triumph by default. Hillary's narrative of The Establishment's inevitable choice was irreparably crippled by her chronic indecision, her inability to muzzle her husband, and internecine squabbling amongst her staff. And McCain's campaign was an unending comedy of errors: as demonstrated by his impatience with any problem that needed more than a quick fix,his inattention to detail (or apparent apathy) on any issue outside of national defense, and an absolutely terrible job in vetting Palin. A lackadaisical candidacy would not bode well for a successful presidency. 2) This book will pretty much kill Sarah Palin's future in politics on the national stage. I posit that's a good thing for the nation and for her own mental health. Her naivete and ignorance of history and policy is startling; the crumbling of her psyche as the campaign drags along is tragic. One of the small triumphs of the McCain campaign was their ability to steward her through her nervous breakdown and avoid a "Muskie moment." I have no doubt that she'd be a lot of fun to converse with at a fish fry or crawfish boil, but I don't want her within 100 miles of the White House. 3) If I put politics on the back burner, I think I would enjoy a cup of coffee or dinner with every 2008 candidate... except for John Edwards. That man is a lying, sanctimonious, delusional, and hypocritical scumbag.