Race of a Lifetime: How Obama won the White House
by Mark Halperin & John Heilemann
(Penguin Books, 2010, 320 pages)
The 2008 US Presidential Election was a fairly straight-forward contest. The Democrat nominee was always likely to win, bar some sort of major stuff-up. Any remaining chance of a Republican upset faded with the tanking of the US economy in the months leading up to the election.
So why was this contest the "race of a lifetime"? The phrase forms the title of the Australian edition of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book, and appears in the subtitle in the American editions. Not for the closeness of the general election. Nor indeed for its one-sidedness; there have been several bigger winners over the past half century. Certainly, the Democratic primary battle was unusually close, but for many older readers the drama in choosing a Democrat candidate in 1968 may still come out on top.
What makes 2008 the race of a lifetime for the authors is the nature of the two main Democrat combatants, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Well over half the book is taken up with their primary battle, with 14 chapters on this contest, compared to just three on the Republican one, the results of which, at least at the start of 2008, were as unpredictable. In fact, if not for Sarah Palin, the Republicans would hardly have appeared in the book at all.
Race of a Lifetime has many of the strengths and weaknesses that one would expect of a book written by a pair of political journalists, New York Magazine's John Heilemann and Time Magazine's Mark Halperin. It is fast-paced and the authors range of sources give them access to a vast range of anecdotes, most of which relate to the various stuff ups in the different campaigns, some of which were public at the time, some of which are new revelations. They gleaned material from more than 300 interviews with more than 200 individuals between July 2008 and September 2009.
The method of quoting used by the authors has raised many questions about the meaning of the "deep background" basis on which the interviews were conducted. The main headline grabbers the authors saved for their book have been the unfortunate comments of House Leader Harry Reid on the advantages of Obama being a "light skinned" African American, and Bill Clinton's statement, as he was trying to woo Teddy Kennedy's endorsement for Hillary, that a few years ago Obama would have been getting them coffee.
Then there is Palin. We learn how, when meant to be prepping for her debate, she reached a stage where "she would routinely shut down -- chin on her chest, arms folded, eyes cast to the floor, speechless and motionless, lost in what those around her described as a kind of catatonic stupor". She ended up doing OK in the debate, as she had done in her other major set-piece, the convention speech. It was what happened for much of the rest of the campaign that was not just directly damaging, but also enormously time-consuming for the McCain campaign.
The book reveals just how long McCain and his team spent working on the option of making Democrat Joe Lieberman his running mate. Then, when that idea was finally canned, there was hardly any time to vet an alternative. Being behind, they decided to roll the dice with a risky choice, rather than a safe one such as Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty. Of course, even now Palin has her staunch defenders, but surely not knowing why there are two Koreas should disqualify someone from becoming Vice President of the United States.
The problems of the McCain campaign are but one of numerous examples of campaign dysfunction. In that way, the book will no doubt prove cathartic for any political operative who has ever worked on any campaign where everything seemed to go wrong. If you think you saw dysfunction in some local campaign in Australia, it must surely pale beside what was happening in the race for die most powerful elected post on the planet.
Reflecting the book's major sources, staffers, it is often the candidates, and particularly their spouses, who cop the toughest rap, none more than John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth:
What the world saw in Elizabeth: A valiant, determined, heroic everywoman. What the Edwards insiders saw: An abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy-woman.
There are many reasons why John Edwards would have made a lousy President -- his wife is not the main one. In fifty years, the media have moved from completely ignoring JFK's lively personal life to taking a prurient delight in focusing on every detail of candidates' private lives. And journalists writing history seem to feel at greater liberty to record these sorts of details, than they would as working journalists at reputable publications.
The third Mrs Giuliani and Cindy McCain are other spouses who would not enjoy reading this book. However, when it comes to spouses, one dominates -- William Jefferson Clinton.
Throughout the coverage of Hillary's campaign, there is always a perception that if Bill just was not around things would go better for Hillary. This was certainly the view of the majority of her campaign organisation, Hillaryland, a group James Carville tagged as "joyless misanthropes who loved neither politics nor people".
Having kept Bill largely out of things throughout 2007, Hillary's Iowa caucus disaster forces her to use him in New Hampshire. The reasons are clear:
She needed him for his doggedness, his buoyancy, and his trademark Houdini juju. She needed him because, even on his worst day, he was a font of ideas about how to win -- as opposed to everyone else on the campaign, whom she increasingly saw as completely and maddeningly useless.
The vindication of Bill in New Hampshire does not last and, within weeks of having been given a bigger role in the campaign, he is forced to the sidelines again after having been seen to have embarrassed the campaign. He certainly had a point when he constantly griped about how much harder the media were on the Clintons than on Obama.
Interestingly, one of the people to whom he complained about his travails was George W. Bush; apparently the two talked surprisingly often. This is one of Dubya's rare appearances, one of the few others coming when he attempted to assist McCain at the height of the financial crisis, but like most observers was bewildered by how badly McCain handled the politics surrounding it.
Bush is not the only absentee from the book. There is little discussion of policy or psephology, nor is there any cultural analysis. Instead, at times the story reads like a Greek morality play where the candidate who is nicest to his spouse, has the most likable spouse, and is the most reasonable to his staff wins.
The framing of the dominant narrative in the book as the battle of the two uber-celebrities, Obama and Hillary, is underscored by the fact that far more space is devoted to Obama's quest to get Clinton to become Secretary of State than is given to the events of election day.
And as Obama tries to convince Clinton to do her duty, the morality play reaches its climax when in "a strange and rare moment -- one of almost incomprehensible candor and vulnerability", the two characters "suddenly metamorphosed into different creatures with each other -- human beings". And what prompted this epiphany -- Hillary admitting the damage Bill had done to her candidacy and the trouble he could cause in the future.
Bill often pointed out to Hillaryland that he had managed to get himself elected President twice. The second time was because he had the commonsense to dash back to the political centre after the debacle of health care reform and the 1994 mid-term elections. It remains to be seen if the hero of Heilemann and Halperin's morality play has the political nous of their story's anti-hero.
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