Game Change

What struck me about the new tawdry Heilemann-Halperin tome on the 2008 election was not necessarily what was picked up by the media, such as further chronicles of Bill Clinton's tantrums, the Reid "dialect" comment, or the poignantly voyeuristic Edwards spiral into political and personal disaster. This is politics as personal saga.

The book does a very good job of chronicling the relationships among and around the Clintons in a way that few books have yet achieved, although, as may be expected in a book of this nature, the winner -- Obama -- is presented nearly in the best light possible, excepting some moments of hubris. The book chronicles the Democratic nomination race grandly, but to the near exclusion of the Republican nomination race and to the extreme de-emphasis of the general election. I learned significantly nothing new about Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and very little about John McCain; certainly nothing to provide a window into the 2012 nomination fight. I also learned significantly little about the Bush administration's final year in power or even its view on the unfolding of the various events of the 2008 campaign. The Palin anecdotes have largely already flown through public discourse -- many flagged by Palin herself in her own book.

Two scenes, not covered by the initial media reviews, stand out.

The first is a window into that terribly lonely and exclusive club of ex-presidents:

Some days later, Bill received a phone call from George W. Bush. The current and former presidents spoke more often than almost anyone knew; from time to time, when 43 was bored, he would call 42 to chew the fat. In this case, Bush, tucked away at Camp David... wanted to reassure his predecessor that HE didn't think Clinton was a racist.

The irony of the situation tickled Bush, but he also felt sympathy for Bill. Hey, buddy, Bush said, I know you're coming under attack; you just gotta keep your chin up. Clinton thanked Bush - then treated him to a 15-minute tirade about the injustices that had befallen him and the sources of his suffering.

The second is the September 2008 meeting, called by Senator McCain upon the "suspension" of his campaign to return to Washington to hammer out a deal with respect to the bailout, then vigorously opposed by House Republicans. During the meeting, a laconic Bush deferred to Hank Paulson (the Bush sources refer to him as their David Petraeus on the economy), the Democrats deferred to Obama, and McCain sat almost completely silent as Obama took over:

One Republican in the room mused silently, "If you closed your eyes and changed everyone's voices, you would have thought Obama was the president of the United States."

At one point, Obama is even said to have told Paulson point-blank, "I'm going to be president, and I don't want to inherit a financial system that's collapsed."

Amusingly, Ben Bernanke and Paulson are reportedly "flabbergasted" as McCain tries to draw a comparison between the financial panic and some recent management troubles at Home Depot.

Altogether, it's an engaging campaign wrap, but nowhere near the iconic Making of the President by Ted White (1960 election), the exhaustive What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer (1988 election), Hunter Thompson's hilariously wild Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972 election) or the split-screen autobiographical All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President by James Carville and Mary Matalin (1992 election).

Dare I say this takes its place alongside Michael Lewis's eccentrically delightful -- and certainly less well-known that that other Lewis book -- Losers (1996 election) and its fixation on the ill-fated Republican nomination fight waged by businessman Morry Taylor.