Rob Horowitz: HBO’s Game Change Reignites Palin Controversy

Rob Horowitz: HBO’s Game Change Reignites Palin Controversy

Research shows that people in evaluating and processing information do not necessarily make hard and fast distinctions between what they learn from the news and what they learn from movies or docudramas. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that movies with political themes have become so hotly contested—judged more for their political point of view than for any aesthetic value. Game Change--the movie based on the best-selling 2008 campaign book of the same name--is certainly no exception.

Former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin weighed in with a video attacking the movie’s major premises even before it debuted on HBO this past Saturday. Conservative and liberal pundits and television talking heads have spent endless hours discussing the political pluses and minuses of this movie.

Not surprisingly, where people stand on Sarah Palin generally informs their opinion of the movie with Palin supporters highly critical and critics generally favorable.

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Conservative commentators have criticized the movie’s narrow focus on Palin’s selection and her subsequent role in the McCain campaign -- as opposed to the broader sweep of the book which chronicled the entire 2008 campaign. According to these critics, it is liberal Hollywood behaving in predictable fashion – attacking a conservative.. In response, the producers have stated that they chose to dramatize the most compelling part of the book. It’s a compelling and believable answer given that both they and HBO want the movie to succeed. After all, chasing profit is a much more fundamental motivation than pushing any political agenda.

Still, one has to be cognizant of the impact of the sources for Game Change. Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s Campaign Manager and Nicole Wallace, the former Bush Communications Director assigned to help steer Sarah Palin, were clearly main sources for Game Change authors, Mark Halperin and John Heilmann. Both Schmidt and Wallace come off much better than Sarah Palin who did not cooperate with the authors.

No matter what one thinks of the general media treatment of Palin, the fact that so many people close to McCain --- after getting to know her up close and personal -- believed she was completely unqualified to be President remains a telling indictment of McCain’s choice to put her on the ticket. This is especially true given that Schmidt, who strongly recommended her, has since gone public about her complete lack of foreign policy knowledge, among other deficiencies.

Longtime Washington hand Howard Baker would have called picking Palin a “riverboat gamble”. And, there’s no question it initially paid off, bringing desperately needed excitement and momentum to a lagging McCain candidacy. Unfortunately, it ended up backfiring as voters watched Palin in a series of shaky interview performances.

For those interested in politics the movie is well-worth watching. It provides an interesting behind-the-scenes glimpse of the dynamics of a campaign on a losing path. It also does a particularly good job of capturing some of the agony that campaign operatives go through when things go wrong.

At the end of the day, Game Change is unlikely to change many minds about Sarah Palin. This charismatic but flawed public figure has a strong base of support as well as an enormous number of voters who strongly dislike her. Her political future remains open: only she knows what she may do next.

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