—Steve Schmidt, Senior Advisor, 2008 Republican Presidential Campaign, trying to convince John McCain to appoint Sarah Palin as his running mate
On 24th July 2008, then Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama made a historic speech — only one of the several he would go on to make over the next few months across the world — in Berlin, Germany. A crowd of about 200,000 people had gathered at the Victory Column war monument to hear him speak. The purpose of his appearance had been widely debated in the German media over the previous few weeks. He was not a leader of the German people, yet they cheered him on as they would an international rock star. Obama, in his distinctively erudite, yet humble manner spoke to the audience as a "proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world", as an advocate of better Trans-Atlantic relations, and as an American statesman concerned about the war on terrorism and Europe’s potential role in it. As he inched closer to the end of his speech, his words grew more pronounced and louder, eliciting even louder and more intense cheers from the crowds. The rest of the world, too, watched a man, whose face they had only seen on the cover of every major international magazine till then, come alive. A celebrity had been born; an international political celebrity of unparalleled charisma (at least in recent history) and boundless potential.
Back in the United States, Obama’s contender, then Republican presidential nominee John McCain watched the live broadcast of the speech at his campaign headquarters with his team of advisors and campaign managers, namely, Rick Davis (Campaign Manager), Mark Salter (Senior Advisor and Speechwriter), Fred Davis (Chief Media Strategist) and Steve Schmidt (Senior Campaign Strategist and Advisor). Obama’s popularity was presumably a major cause for worry for the group and rightly so. They knew fighting this man would not be simple. In the following weeks, McCain’s decision to have former Democrat Joe Leiberman as his vice presidential running mate fell through and his pre-poll numbers were weakening, specifically with women. His advisors who, at one point, had suggested attacking Obama’s “celebrity” status were desperate to bring in star power of their own — a charismatic female vice-presidential nominee who could draw in conservative as well as women’s votes — a game changer. A brief — and this is not an exaggeration — Google search later, Rick Davis zeroed in on Sarah Palin.
Game Change is a tale of caution, a lesson in haste. It traces the trajectory of a doomed US presidential election campaign and the rise, fall and rise again of a political superstar-in-making, who perhaps didn’t have as much to lose from the Republican Party’s defeat as McCain, but clearly gained a lot more. Till late 2008, Palin was not a very well known politician. Sure, one could contend she was the governor of Alaska, but then, she was the governor of Alaska. In the scene with Rick Davis’s Google search, he is shown to have trouble trying to recall her name. But a few phone calls later and following a “thorough” vetting procedure that took no longer than five days to ascertain her capabilities and rule out any skeletons in her proverbial closet, she was chosen to be McCain’s running mate in the 2008 US presidential elections.
The movie is told from the point of view Steve Schmidt who has, since the elections, emerged as one of the biggest and most vocal critics of Sarah Palin and was also a primary source for the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, on which the movie is based. The tone of the movie, hence, is clearly not in favour of Palin, yet it is told smartly and subtly enough to not appear to be an agenda-driven tirade against Palin and her party.
Following the announcement of her nomination, problems soon started piling up for the Republican campaign managers. What had seemed like a squeaky clean political career on the surface was turning out to be more chequered than any of them could have imagined or possibly accounted for. The five-day vet had clearly not worked, but it was too late to point fingers. The team got right down to business covering up its tail on controversies surrounding Palin they had entirely missed such as Troopergate, her husband’s involvement with the Alaska Independence Party and her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. However, the biggest hurdle facing the team at this juncture was Palin’s gross ignorance about political matters of national and international relevance. Having sailed through her speech at the Republican National Convention accepting her nomination as the party’s vice presidential candidate, she was wildly sought after by the media for one-on-one air time. This worried her advisory committee intensely considering she thought that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, that ‘Fed’ is short for the federal government, that she wasn’t aware of the fundamental difference between the war in Iraq and that in Afghanistan and that she thought the Queen was the head of government in the UK.
Thanks to Youtube, we’re all aware of the infamous gaffes made by Palin in her few pre-election television interviews, particularly those with Charlie Gibson of ABC News and Katie Couric of (then) CBS News. At one point in her interview with Gibson, she said her credentials in foreign policy (specifically with reference to Russia) were reinforced by the fact that they could see Russia from land in Alaska. The interview with Couric was far more disastrous and was widely mocked across the US media. Any mention of these interviews would also be incomplete without Tina Fey’s unforgettable parody on Palin for Saturday Night Live. Fey may not directly be a part of the film, but clips from her sketches have been liberally used in the Game Change, making her, in a way, indispensable to the story.
But even as the media and the rest of the world derided Palin for her ostensibly poor understanding of politics and foreign affairs, what we didn’t see in these interviews was how Palin had hit a personal low around this time. She had been on the move for a while and the campaign had kept her away from her family. As the media ravaged her over the Gibson interview and she faced growing pressure from her advisors, she sank into a state of mild depression. She refused to acknowledge or respond to anything her advisors said and instead grew to resent them intensely, blaming them for her failures. Following the interview with Couric, her personal advisor Nicolle Wallace asked to be removed from Palin’s team because of her obstinacy. Wallace eventually went on to publicly admit that she hadn’t voted in the elections as she doubted Palin’s capabilities.
Game Change clearly does not shy away from taking a stand against Palin’s brand of politics, but it does so without attacking her personal life at any point. One even feels immense sympathy for her and her family when she’s mocked by the media or when the news of her teenage daughter’s pregnancy becomes public. It’s at moments like these when one sees her as a regular, if simple-minded, woman for whom family comes first. That she’s also a politician with a strong conservative following is not because she blindly panders to her people’s values, but because she actually believes what they believe and is fervently vocal about it. She actually believes that it was God’s will that her Downs-inflicted son be born, that rape is not good enough a reason to have an abortion and that creationism should be taught in schools and her fans love her for that.
Though the entire cast fits their roles perfectly, especially Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, Ed Harris as McCain and Sarah Paulson as Nicolle Wallace, the film, without a doubt, belongs to Julianne Moore. Not only is Moore’s physical transformation as the gun-toting, Dr. Pepper-swigging Palin uncannily accurate, she has got her mannerisms, accent and voice modulation spot on. Comparing Youtube footage of the real interviews with those in the film, one struggles to find the slightest difference in hand movement or facial expressions between the two Palins.
Great performances, a smart screenplay and razor-sharp editing make Game Change utterly watchable and even exciting. The film ends with McCain’s concession speech after the Republican party’s defeat in the election. As McCain draws to a close, he thanks Palin for her immense support and hails her as a great potential future leader, and the crowd erupts in cheers, chanting “Palin! Palin! Palin!”. Amid the applause, the camera shifts focus to Wallace and Schmidt as they worriedly look around at the people cheering Palin. It’s a moment of grim realisation and serious introspection for the two advisors as they are hit by the true extent of their mistake in bringing Palin to the national political foreground. Today, after four years, I wonder if they feel a bit more relieved.
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Game Change is a TV movie that aired on HBO on 10 March 2012.
