The Economist
"Game Change"
Unsympathetic characters
Mar 12th 2012, 19:06 by E.G. | AUSTIN
TRAGEDY typically has an element of inevitability: because this character is the way he is, or because things are what they are, events led inexorably to this outcome. I had that in mind when watching "Game Change", HBO's new movie about the 2008 presidential campaign, based on Mark Halperin and John Heileman's book of the same name. The movie focuses on the McCain campaign's decision to tap Sarah Palin, then the little-known governor of Alaska, as Mr McCain's running-mate in an effort to generate the kind of game-changing moment that the flailing campaign desperately needed. As we know, they succeeded, but as with many unorthodox experiments, they lost control of the ultimate outcome. Should they have been more careful?
On the evidence, yes. Some early reviews have suggested that the movie offers a sympathetic portrayal of Sarah Palin. Considering that she's portrayed as stupid, self-absorbed, shallow, stubborn, volatile, delusional, hysterical, and mentally unstable, "sympathetic" is probably a stretch. What we can say is that she looks somewhat less unsympathetic in the context of a dysfunctional campaign. The most perplexing character here is Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's former strategist, who has praised the movie as "very accurate". To some extent, the movie flatters him. When the film opens, he's tossing a frisbee to his dog, advising Mr McCain to campaign from the heart and put "country first", and demurring over an invitation to join up because he promised his wife he wouldn't. Once Mrs Palin joins the ticket, the character is the ambassador for the audience—explaining to the governor what the Fed is, suggesting that she abandon her low-carb diet, clutching a mug of tea. On election night, he confronts Mrs Palin over her stated desire to give a concession speech. Luminous with barely suppressed rage, he explains to her that a campaign concession speech is a solemn occasion, the event that legitimates the victor as the commander-in-chief of America's military forces—a particularly sacred moment given that America is at war and has just elected the first black president in the history of the country. Therefore she, Sarah Palin, is not going to elbow in on John McCain's moment.
Setting aside the validity of Mr Schmidt's argument here—it's the election that legitimates the next president, not the losing candidate's concession speech—it's a little jarring that he's suddenly flying the flag for solemnity. The film also portrays him as the guy who encouraged Mr McCain to get risky in the first place. He gets excited about getting a woman, any woman, on the ticket; he doesn't bother to ask her any policy questions before she joins; and he argues to Mr McCain that it's better to lose by ten points after trying to win than to settle for a dignified defeat.
That is in contrast to, for example, Nicolle Wallace, also a former McCain advisor who has described the film as accurate. Although she doesn't play a role in the VP selection or vetting, she's sceptical of the pick, and although she tries to make the best of things, she does accuse Mr Schmidt, apparently fairly, of having failed to scrutinise Mrs Palin because he didn't want to know about her limitations. There are moments when the McCain staffers suggest that they didn't have much room to manoeuvre by the summer of 2008; Mr McCain himself is portrayed as taking that view of things. "So what—I just fuck off and die?" he asks at one point, looking at some grim polls. (Mr McCain has said that the book is biased, and that he doesn't swear so much.) The suggestion here is that if the campaign wanted a chance of winning, they had to do something bold. The deterministic strength of that "had to" is where intuitions will vary. Most voters don't see presidential elections as a game, and even the people who fall into political realism, like Mr Schmidt, seem to realise that in more reflective moments. It's as if they're torn between their instincts as political operatives and their interests as citizens. I can see how these internal conflicts arise, but I'd like to think they're not inevitable.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/03/game-change
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