Tomorrow’s water-cooler topic at work will be the HBO Sarah Palin movie, with riffs on the performances, accuracy and political meaning. It’s not likely there will be much talk about its morality.
In 1962, an Eisenhower aide, Emmett J. Hughes, published “The Ordeal of Power,” revealing internal debates during his White House years. It was a first, and when JFK heard about it, he told his staff, “I hope nobody around here is writing that kind of book.” Nobody did.
In our era, everybody tells everything in memoirs or self-serving interviews with journalists. The public’s right to know, you know.
Fair enough, especially about what manipulative political campaigns are hiding, but within “Game Change” and Julianne Moore’s amazing performance, another movie is struggling to be seen—-not about Sarah Palin’s total lack of qualifications to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office but the incredible irresponsibility of John McCain and their handlers once they discover it.
By giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, they manage to hide Palin’s ignorance in her debate with Joe Biden and then high-five one another over the accomplishment, but not once is there even fleeting consideration of replacing her on the ticket, as George McGovern did with Thomas Eagleton in 1972 when news about his mental-health history leaked.
In 2008, says the author of a book about Palin, she “was picked by McCain’s all-male pack of senior advisers not because of her experience and statesmanship, but because of a political calculus that placed a higher value on her flash than her substance. They were looking for a ‘game-changer’–and they treated the political future of this country as though it were, indeed, a game.”
MORE.