It took me a long time to read Game Change, for the ultimate result, giving us the Obama Administration, has had me munching on antacid tablets for five and a half years as of this writing. Now however, with Barack's Presidency collapsing like a folding chair, and his historic rank sure to be around James Buchanan territory, I whizzed through the book quickly, half-chuckling, half-appalled at how celebrity status, and a superior campaign combined to anoint this fakir President of the United States. To paraphrase the Latin actor, the late Fernando Lamas,"It is better to look good than govern good".
From the time he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, stressing the concept of unity, Obama was headed for stardom. Unlike the other main candidates in the book, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John McCain, his strategists functioned well together, and created an astonishing model for fundraising that made public financing, for him at least, unnecessary. Obama, cool, collected and egocentric, was, by all appearances, something new, indeed exciting. Underneath the veneer, so carefully crafted that it no doubt fooled many of his ardent supporters, was an agenda of division and an almost pathological desire to downgrade the country he is currently destroying.
His combatants for the Democratic nomination in 2008 created their own problems. Hillary, thought to be a queen in waiting, hated the drudgery of calling supporters, and prized loyalty in her staff above competence, and even unity. Her staff was always battling, her first campaign manager, a Chicagoan named Patty Solis Doyle wholly incompetent. The key strategists always were thrusting knives at each other. And Clinton herself was a ponderous campaigner, maladroit at appearing, unlike her husband Bill, at ease, or making every move less than a calculation. Hillary was, and is, essentially as a campaigner, sort of a female Richard Nixon. Essentially, against her instincts, she had to use Bill as chief surrogate, and he was often out of control. But Bill Clinton, even while in the White House never had any coattails. And did not have them in 2008.
The third wheel in the race for the Democrats John Edwards, turned out to have the same internal campaign problems as Hillary, a bickering staff for certain, but complicated by the role of his wife Elizabeth. Cutting, condescending and unfortunately suffering from the incurable cancer that would several years later take her life, she was a terrible presence in the campaign trail. Edwards had two other problems. Once known as a nice guy, after he ran for vice-president alongside John Kerry, he became messianic. He could do no wrong. He dropped out early, tring to swap his endorsement for a Cabinet post. His reputation became tattered after his affair with a whacked out bimbo, Rielle Hunter made tabloid headlines. Later on, it was learned that he had fathered her child, although he attemptedto cover that up by using a low level aide, married, to claim fatherhood. John Edwards, a cipher and empty suit, is as odious as they make them.
McCain, after his campaign nearly collapsed in debt, recovered by running by the seat of his pants, as is his wont, since he thought the campaign was wherever he was, forget strategy, logistics and tactics. It was all about him and it showed. He won the Republican nomination because the field was so weak. There was nobody else to really challenge him, although a puff of smoke might have bowled his campaign over for good. Trailing badly, cash-strapped and not the same man who ran against Bush 43 for the 2000 nomination,and needing a surprise pick to join him on the ticket to ramp up the campaign, he chose, after little vetting, Sarah Palin. She gave great speeches, became a star, held Joe Biden to a draw in their debate, and knew practically nothing about history or policy. Palin did not know why Korea was divided, who the enemy was in Iraq, nor what, even generally the Federal Reserve did. She couldn't even get through a softball interview with Katie Couric, who never asked her a hard question, and like McCain, was undisciplined. She was sometimes moody and isolated during the campaign, more concerned with her poll numbers in Alaska. It was not just that she had but twenty months as Governor of Alaska. Sadly for this conservative, it is beyond debate, there is no there there. She is fine on Fox News. In the Oval Office, she would have been a calamity. None of that really mattered however. Nobody votes for a vice-president. And God, if he come down to join McCain on the ticket, could not have made him win that November.
Once the financial meltdown hit in September, it was all over but the shouting. McCain, not well versed in economics, suspended his campaign to no good purpose, and simply did not, or could not lead the Republicans on that issue. On the other hand, Obama looked commanding, and again, cool, because he consulted important and knowledgeable people on the problem. McCain was just bored.
But truth be told, it was a virtual certainty that a Democrat, any Democrat, would have won in 2008. Any time an unpopular incumbent is leaving office, the candidate of the other party wins. Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson gave rise to Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon. George W.Bush never even appeared in person at the GOP Convention.
Heilemann and Halperin have done a good job of getting the inside story of the campaign, in the tradition of Theodore White, who started in all in 1960. But they never got a handle on the real Obama, even though they sometimes point out his arrogance and churlishness. They look at him as a pragmatic liberal, although he is not liberal at all, but studiously dictatorial and a true radical. Hillary, just as activist as he but for what she perceives as the betterment of the country, plainly doesn't like him, although she served as his Secretary of State. McCain, who likes Bill and Hillary both, apostasy for a Republican, detests him. People in Congress during the campaign were enamored of him and his power with the spoken word. Now he has no friends there, and fewer and fewer lapdogs. Like Wilson,another terrible and dictatorial president, Obama, as is plainly evident by now, thinks there are two kinds of people, superior beings who should run the government, and a lesser class of citizens, who should not think independently and should heel without dissent. We do not know what kind of a president Hillary or McCain would have been, but they, in the Senate, both reached across the aisle. Two things are certain. Obama won. The rest of us lost, and are still losing.
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