Game Change

Last night we watched the movie "Game Change." 

The book was hyped on a podcast I listen to and I got hooked so I"d read the book.

As usual the book was a superior tale.  The best part of the book detailed the Obama-Clinton battle during the Democratic primaries.  The movie cut that out and focused on the McCain-Palin duo.  Duo isn't a good word because McCain was mostly a bit player.  The story was really about Palin and the people that picked and attempted to manage her.

History and current events don't seem to have been a strong point for Governor Palin, something her handlers discovered after she was picked.  However she was a decent public speaker and seems to have had no trouble remembering speeches.  If she was fed questions and answers she appeared to be capable of reciting them back convincingly. She wasn't too interested in the big picture of events, which wasn't surprising given that history/current events were her strong suites.  She had trouble naming a newspaper she read.  When asked to name a Supreme Court case Wade vs Roe didn't pop to her lips, strange for a pro-life politician. 

When her managers quit trying to get her to understand events and gave her scripted question answers she did well enough on stage.  It just took them awhile to figure that out.

I don't believe that Sarah Palin was the reason McCain didn't win the election.  He didn't preform well during the financial crisis of 2007 and Obama had a huge MoJo.  Still it was disheartening to see someone running for office with so little insight into the world.  Sadly I don't think that's unusual.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Change