I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time (hell, I got it from the library three months ago and... just never quite got around to it). And it's a fascinating read. I have no experience in a campaign from which to form a frame of reference, so it's hard to leverage the book as commentary on the strategy of a campaign or infer lessons, so the "lessons learned" is sadly underdeveloped. Still, it provides ample fodder for reference points in discussing a number of broader issues.
The first was simply comparing my own experiences observing the campaigns with the narratives of such intimately involved operators. At this time, I was reading the news for something like four hours a day, and consider the time my most well-informed period yet. I remember showing up in DC for my new job, within days promptly shipping down to Colonial Williamsburg for a product conference and being excited that I had a hotel room to myself where I could watch the YouTube debate in peace. I remember finding the most enjoyable part of using my apartment's fitness center to train up for the Army to be watching the primary results while I ran on the treadmill (it was February and around 20, even my hatred of treadmills wasn't enough to overcome those obstacles). I remember exactly where in the North Carolina woods I was on election night, and I remember exactly what other part of the woods I was in when Obama was sworn in (by exactly, I can give you an MGRS 8-digit grid to both).
Yet in reading through the book, I was continually reminded of how much had passed over my head unknown and unnoticed. The Drexel debate in Philadelphia had somehow passed completely past my radar. I remember vaguely the stories about Clinton's confused mess of a debate and how all the candidates had piled on her, but in terms of my personal relation to the candidates or preferences, that debate wouldn't have even been a footnote. At the time, I wrote about what undercut Clinton as an attractive candidate for me, and the twin events bookend the Drexel debate by a few months. Likewise with the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held to be so pivotal in Iowa. Halperin and Heilemann hail the dinner as a crucial event in cementing Obama's potential as a candidate, yet I couldn't have even told you what party organized the dinner, let alone who attended or cared.
Even paying attention, I missed an enormous amount, and I considered myself an informed voter. Of course, missing the day-to-day tactical maneuverings is different than understanding a candidates position on issues and making informed choices, but it makes me wonder the gradient of the informed voter pyramid, and if it wasn't closer to a steeple.
Which brings up point two. Halperin and Heilemann make a point in not talking about the comparative issues in the campaigns as at all determinative. Instead, what shaped the narratives of influential events were the styles and tactics of the candidates. They make a point in noting that Obama campaign had been vapid, and contrasted that to Clinton's cool command of policy, yet the dominant factors weren't Clinton's ability to detail new plans, but her perception of being informed and experienced; people responded to her image, not her policies. Likewise, despite the deliberate choice by the Obama campaign to stay out of the minutia, people responded. Curiously, the two events described haiographically are Obama's speech on race, and his performance during the McCain stunt over the economic meltdown. In both cases, quotes are replete describing Obama's cool authority and command in periods of crisis.
Third observation: Obama's campaign was never overwhelmed by a third-party, like those that crippled his competition. Rudy and Edwards had their wives running their campaigns. Clinton had Clinton. McCain had Palin. Her cult of celebrity developed at such a pace that I remember it turning into a choice between Obama and Palin, and the topics of the chapters on closing days of the McCain candidacy are spent talking about Palin, not McCain. The McCain candidacy was so overwhelming that she swamped the campaign; she became to top of the ticket. Which is all the more ironic considering how incompetent she was exposed to be, and the disaster of crisis control the McCain candidacy exercised in her defense. The years since have only confirmed the sheer irresponsibility of letting her near power.
But it does provide a good counterpoint to the Clinton/Clinton campaign. That the first serious woman candidate should also be the spouse to a former President raises a huge host of questions. True enough, her tenure as First Lady gave her the name recognition that her Senate career or private career probably could never have granted her, to the extent I wonder if her candidacy would have been possible without her tenure as First Lady. It's purely speculative, but I'm curious how instrumental her marriage was to her candidacy, despite her independent qualifications. It gave her an In to the Democratic establishment and her husband's resources and connections were likely invaluable. Yet, that same tenure was also what made her negatives so stratospheric and confirmed her unsuitability as the Democratic candidate for many.
But her campaign was constantly under threat of being overwhelmed by Bill, and nearly got swamped multiple times. It was explicitly cited by Obama as a disqualification for a VP slot. Nevertheless, Bill's instincts and actions provided some of the most potent assets to the campaign. He brought enormous baggage, yet he remained a preternaturally gifted politician, and remained loved by a good sector of the Democratic vote. Voters seemed to respond to him in ways Hillary could only envy.
Ultimately, however, it never seemed like a fully comfortable narrative was developed to encompass Bill, both internally and externally. The Clinton campaign never seemed comfortable in how far forward they wanted to push Bill, if he should play the typical role of the candidate's spouse, if they should leverage his favorables among Democrats as a shadow candidate, if he should be a campaign architect, or if he should disappear for fear of overshadowing Hillary. Given his tendency to do his own thing, trying to pigeon hole him would likely have been unproductive, but without that frame, she never ran a truly solo campaign (although, given the love of Bill in the fourth estate, he wasn't allowed to leave stage right, even when he tried).
Which brings up the last observation, that of suppressed narratives. I remember how intimately issues of race and gender were tied into almost everything throughout the campaigns, yet both Obama and Clinton seemed to try to whitewash and neuter themselves, respectively. Insofar as I remember accusations and counter-accusations flying, I remember it was from their supporters. Halperin and Heilemann make the point of noting that both candidates actually suppressed proxies from raising those issues or trying to quiet fires others started on their behalf. Obama's speech on race and Wright aimed to be post-racial.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what that would look like. It's one thing to talk about an America which doesn't pay attention to race, that accepts someone simply as who they are and not from what group they hail. Given recent screeds like Dinesh D'Souza's inane "Kenyan 'anti-colonialism' ", longing for an era that transcends such simplistic explanations is fairly attractive.
Yet I can't help but feeling like a post-racial campaign is a campaign designed to be unthreatening to white voters. When a post-racial campaign looks and sounds suspiciously like a main-stream, old-money campaign, avoiding issues of race sounds more like smoothing one's self out than transcend complicated narratives.
Which was why I found his Wright speech so riveting. If I had to pick any particular influence for my vote, that was it. Once I left for Basic, I had almost no time to keep up on the vicissitudes of the campaigns or to research the issues, yet I felt confident in my vote almost single-handedly because of that speech.
So it serves as a good proxy to counterpoint my experiences of the campaign with Game Change. To Halperin and Heilemann, this speech was a just yet another moment as campaign drama, the resolution to the drama of Reverend Wright and the looming threat he posed. It was yet another moment of drama, an episodes that merited less page space than a discussion of Edward's trysts or Palin's... idiosyncracies.
Halperin and Heilemann aren't writing a treatise on the comparative merits of the candidates, nor do they pretend such at all. But the absence of commentary on substance ends up regulating observations about the competence of the candidates to the results of focus groups or the plaudits of the commentariat. So, while the book is a fascinating look into the private side of the candidates lives that wasn't shown for public consumption, it's disinclinations to involve higher order observations on the conduct of campaigns, relative strategies, or even just personal analysis ends up making the book feel more gossipy than substantial. High-end, quality gossip on power-brokers, to be sure, but gossip all the same. I'm armed for that proverbial beer. I'm just not sure I'm a more informed voter or campaign watcher.
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