Politics is such an ugly business, populated as it is with labyrinthine agendas and ideological entrenchment. If it weren't for the obscene amount of public power wielded by the victors of the various elections, no sane person would bother with it.
Yet, somehow, politics has become a spectator sport, particularly in the United States where the polarization of the two major parties establishes a kind of red-team versus blue-team mentality that fits the sports analogy perfectly. Who's up? Who's down? Who's about to rally and whose about to take their ball and go home? This is the talk of bars and coffee shops.
So it should not surprise, in the least, that the fortunes of politicians are covered with the same zeal and the same loose, ethical standards found in sportswriting. For make no mistake, Game Change cannot pretend to have any journalistic credibility. It is an eminently entertaining recount of the 2008 Presidential race which draws wonderfully acidic portraits of all the major participants from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin, but there's hardly any attribution anywhere, especially in the most juicy moments. Compare this to the book by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson which covered the same topic but kept itself from the kind of backroom speculation Game Change devolves to.
There's room in our culture for Game Change. After all, there's room in our culture for gossip pages at magazines, but we should not assume that this has any more credibility than that. Perhaps Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann nail every point, properly paint every character portrait, but without attribution we can't know that. Without attribution, this is just particularly well-researched gossip.
That said, it is a delightful read. The portrait of Elizabeth Edwards is devastating and memorable, as is the extent to which the McCain/Palin campaign seemed doomed from the start. But enjoyable isn't credible and so I must walk away from Game Change unsure of what's true and what's old-fashioned score-settling. (3/5 Stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment