Montreal Gazette
Game Change: John McCain / Sarah Palin ticket explored
By Bill Brownstein
MONTREAL - Perhaps it just dawned on you as well. You, too, may have figured out just which single element the circus surrounding the ongoing Republican Party presidential primaries is lacking to make it complete: Sarah Palin.
I miss Sarah Palin. I miss Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. I miss Sarah Palin doing Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.
Now that was entertainment for many of us. Not so much for many Republicans.
It was the view of many pundits that the “maverick” Palin cost John McCain the presidency in 2008. It was also the view of many that the selection of Palin as the former’s vice-presidential candidate not only cost McCain the White House but his reputation as well.
Palin is back again to amuse and/or confound the curious and/or her detractors and to haunt McCain in Game Change, an absolutely engrossing affair that premieres Saturday at 10 p.m. on HBO Canada.
The film is based on the bestseller Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. But director Jay Roach, clearly in search of high entertainment value and ratings, has opted to forego the Obama and Clinton part and focus exclusively on the McCain campaign, from the decision to pick Palin as his running mate to their defeat in the 2008 election.
There has already been much advance flak about the depiction of Palin in the flick as scattered, ill-informed and irrational, as the veritable deer … sorry … moose in the headlights. But before some start accusing the liberal media and/or the Democrats for slanting her story, it must be noted that the source for much of the material herein comes from the McCain team, specifically its chief strategist Steve Schmidt as well as adviser Nicole Wallace, who spent many hours of her life – she’ll never get back – with Palin on a bus.
The astonishingly talented Julianne Moore has the bobbed hair, oversized eyeglasses and Wasilla whine – although Fey probably gives better Palin patter – and will make viewers forget they are not watching the former governor of Alaska. Ed Harris does a most convincing McCain. But it’s Woody Harrelson who smokes – no, not his favoured recreational pharmaceutical – most here.
Harrelson turns in a show-stopping performance as Schmidt, the man who makes the call on selecting Palin to be McCain’s No. 2 and who shortly thereafter is forever flummoxed by her.
Enhancing the film’s realism and intrigue is that actual news footage from CNN, MSNBC and other outlets is cleverly crosscut with the dramatized action on screen.
The movie begins with a post-election CNN interview with Schmidt, conducted by Anderson Cooper. He asks why Palin was chosen.
“My job is to give political advice,” Schmidt (Harrelson) says. “We needed to do something bold to try to win the race.”
“If you had to do it all over again, would you have her on the ticket?” asks Cooper.
Before Schmidt can answer that question, the scene shifts back to the pre-election campaign in 2007. But Schmidt’s answer to that question will become abundantly clear and revealed over the next two hours of the film. And political junkies as well as those who know as little about U.S. foreign policy as, say, Palin, will be riveted.
McCain (Harris) is portrayed as ultimately decent, a tough-talking hombre who refuses to pander to extremist sentiments – such as targeting his rival Barack Obama as a terrorist – to get elected. But he must battle constantly, first to win the Republican leadership race and then to go up against Obama for presidency. As the ubiquitous Wolf Blitzer ponders, in reference to McCain’s previous unsuccessful bid to become the Republican presidential candidate in 2000: “Can a soufflé rise twice?”
It becomes immediately obvious that Obama is riding an unprecedented wave of popularity. The McCain team is desperate to try to stifle it. Schmidt and his backroom boys are undecided if they want a celebrity or a statesman as a vice-presidential candidate to breathe life into the McCain campaign.
They toy with the notion of asking Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman to become McCain’s would-be veepee. But when the media gets wind of that – “the McCain/Lieberman comedy team may be doing Atlantic City this summer,” barks CNN’s Jack Cafferty – they decide they need a “game-changer,” a celeb to spark their dormant campaign.
Enter Sarah Palin (Moore), moosehunter/creationist/hockey-mom. Palin, governor of Alaska for only 18 months, is vetted by the McCain team in just five days. “High risk, high reward,” McCain trumpets in bringing her on board. “I’ve always been a risk-taker.”
And so the adventure begins.
Schmidt and his cohorts sense trouble immediately when Palin tells them that it’s “God’s plan” for her to run. Then comes the unsettling gossip that Palin speaks in tongues and that she abused her governor’s power in Alaska for firing her public-safety commissioner in the “Troopergate scandal.”
The strategists quickly conclude that Palin has not been vetted well at all, that she knows little about domestic policy and bupkes about foreign policy. And that they had better hide her from the media, who would be dumbstruck if they knew Palin thought U.S. soldiers were in Iraq “because Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11.”
Enter Tina Fey, doing Palin impressions on SNL. Yikes. Enter Katie Couric interviewing Palin. Oops.
The timing couldn’t be worse for the McCain campaign. With the world economy on the brink of collapse, Palin appears to be undergoing a meltdown. She unravels. Her senior adviser Wallace (Sarah Paulson) also unravels, largely because she is unable to penetrate Palin and to prepare her for media scrutiny.
Then comes the ultimate concern: If elected, Palin is a heartbeat away from the presidency – a fear more exacerbated by the fact that McCain’s health is suspect.
A pretty frightening scenario and one that begins to resonate throughout the land.
Despite the fact that Palin does decently in debate with Obama’s running mate Joe Biden, the writing on the wall becomes ever clear and bold: the McCain/Palin ticket is doomed. Even more so, when a desperate Palin decides to go rogue and really speak her mind.
“This is not a campaign – it’s a bad reality show,” the dispirited Schmidt stammers.
But the final nail in the coffin just may come when Dubya’s vice-president, Dick Cheney, reportedly states that Palin was a “reckless choice.” As pointed out by a sage McCain strategist, when Cheney is your moral high ground, you are in serious trouble.
You betcha!
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Game+Change+John+McCain+Sarah+Palin+ticket+explored/6272179/story.html#ixzz1oZgN5fQW
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