"Game Change," the long-awaited and very gossipy chronicle of the 2008 campaign by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, is chock full of revelations that are bound to stir the folks who live within ten miles of the Beltway -- and perhaps even reverberate beyond Washington.
The book doesn't officially go on sale until next Tuesday. The authors are slated to appear on 60 Minutes Sunday to preview it. I found it available for purchase at a Washington, D.C. bookstore tonight.
Among the more fascinating items:
On page 37, a remark, said "privately" by Sen. Harry Reid, about Barack Obama's racial appeal. Though Reid would later say that he was neutral in the presidential race, the truth, the authors write, was that his
encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a
black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a
"light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he
wanted to have one," as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in
fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for
the Democratic nomination.
E-mails sent late Friday to Reid staffers were not immediately answered. (Update: Reid
apologized.)
The authors write on page 50 about the "war room within a war room"
that Hillary Clinton put together to deal with questions about her
husband's "libido." The circle of trust included media strategist
Howard Wolfson, lawyer Cheryl Mills and confidant Patti Solis Doyle.
The
war room within a war room dismissed or discredited much of the gossip
floating around, but not all of it. The stories about one woman were
more concrete, and after some discreet fact-finding, the group
concluded that they were true: that BIll was indeed having an affair --
and not a frivolous one-night stand but a sustained romantic
relationship. .... For months, thereafter, the war room within a war
room braced for the explosion, which her aides knew could come at any
moment.
The authors do not identify the woman.
I don't want to give away the whole book... but I would be remiss if I
did not point to the chapters about the unbelievably dysfunctional
husband and wife team of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not only, it
turns out, did many senior Edwards staffer suspect that John was having
an affair, several confronted John Edwards about it, and came away
believing the rumors. At least three campaign aides resigned because
of their knowledge of the affair well before the national media picked
up on those early National Enquirer stories.
And John and Elizabeth (who the book says was known to Edwards insiders
as "abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending, crazywoman") fought,
in front of staffers, about the affair. The authors describe a moment
where Elizabeth, in a such a state of fury, deliberately tears her
blouse in the parking lot of a Raleigh airport terminal, "exposing
herself. 'Look at me," she wailed at John and then staggered, nearly
falling to the ground." (That's page 142.) (This was in October, by
the way, well before the media took the reports of the Hunter affair
seriously.)
About Obama himself the book includes plenty of observations about his
manner and temperament, many astute and some original, though no
earth-shattering revelations. The chapters about John and Cindy
McCain's relationship are fascinating; the coverage of McCain's
selection of Sarah Palin is mostly familiar ground. There are insights
about the way the Bush White House perceived the McCain campaign,
although they can be summed up as: not very well.
There are telling anecdotes, such as when Ed Goeas, a pollster for Rudy
Giuliani, responds to Judith Giuliani's query about how she could best
help his campaign: "First of all, you're his third wife. What you
should try to be is humble." (Page 290).
Political scientists aren't going to like this book, because it
portrays politics as it is actually lived by the candidates, their
staff and the press, which is to say -- a messy, sweaty, ugly, arduous
competition between flawed human beings -- a universe away from numbers
and probabilities and theories.
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