If this account of Senator John McCain’s Presidential Campaign was only just partly true then it really sinks in what a catastrophic disaster this country/world would had suffered if he had defeated Barak Obama and we had to deal with the nightmare called Sarah Palin as our Vice President.  I am assuming that as the script for this HBO dramatized account was based on the best selling book of the same name by respected political journalists Mark Halperin of ‘Time’ Magazine and John Heilemann of ‘New York’ Magazine then this ridiculously implausible scenario is accurate.  God help us all.

Before the Republicans Convention in 2008 it was very clear to McCain’s Campaign Team that their man was trailing badly in all the Polls and heading for a colossal defeat.  They advised the Candidate that they only way to combat the celebrity-like adulation that Obama was enjoying nationwide was to go outside the box in picking his running mate.  McCain wanted to have Joe Lieberman which, given their closeness and the fact that as mavericks, made very good sense and as they would make a great team, but such a partnership would not appease the right-wing of the Republican Party. With Hilary Clinton out of the race and all the Polls showing that he was losing the women’s votes, McCain was persuaded to pick a woman.  Not a well-known political figure but an outsider with scant experience (and therefore hopefully no baggage) who was both telegenic and seemingly au fait with the right rabble-rousing rhetoric.

The backroom boys rushed through the vetting process in a mere five days to ensure that she would be in place in time for the Convention, and as Sarah Palin seemed to have no demons in her short career to date, McCain picked her.  The telling of this story is sympathetic to McCain who comes over as a decent honorable man, and the only thing that sits uneasy with this concept is that he ran for President on a campaign he called ‘Country First’, and yet there is no shadow of a doubt at any time that he chose his unlikely running mate putting his personal ambition first.

The gigantic gaffes that Palin made from day one were well documented at the time when they occurred, but what I had not appreciated that these were just the mere tip of the iceberg as the Campaign managed to keep a lid on most of the horrors … until now that is. It was not just the fact of her total ignorance of the entire world outside of Alaska, but her inability/reluctance to even grasp essential fundamental facts.  The only way the Team got her through (and by the bare skin of her teeth) was have her learn 20 key phrases parrot-fashion and insist that she just keep chanting them regardless of the questions fired at her.

It wasn’t just this that shocked McCain and his team but the slow realisation that this woman who smelling the scent of real power, became like a runaway train totally out of control, because she possibly had real mental issues.

I’m still reeling from the fact that I was as naive as Palin in a way that even I thought she could not be as bad as the press had portrayed her.  It seems that she is much worse.  She is nothing more than a small-town, small-minded right-wing reactionary who is a consummate amateur actress when she is fired up on diet-sodas. She will always have a following with simple folk who like to hear hackneyed-cliches that stir up fear and hate, but I’m kind of relieved knowing now that she could never ever get elected to any position of power anywhere except Alaska.  Lets hope she stays there and keeps an eye on the people of Russia from her window as she so loves doing. 

Julianne Moore captured Palin brilliantly, and well deserved her Golden Globe and Emmy for her performance.  I loved the somewhat bizarre scene when Moore playing Palin is watching Tina Fey playing Palin on ‘Saturday Night Live’.  Ed Harris was spot on as McCain (also winning a Golden Globe)  and Woody Harrelson held it altogether as Steve Schmidt the Political Adviser who so regrets ever bringing up Palin’s name.

I had no desire at all to see this movie when HBO first showed it, but I am so very glad I did.  Even though the intro to this Blog clearly states that I do not watch horror movies, I made the exception for this at this one as it did have a happy ending. A very happy one.

★★★★★★★★★