Paddock’s Picks: “Game Change” and “The Politician”

 

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock

Because I work in a library, I’m privy to a lot of books that I might not otherwise know about. It’s hard not to take a glance at all the new ones that come in, and often, I do more than that.  If I catch myself reading more than the first page, then I know I’m hooked, and that I’m going to want to read the whole book. And that’s a hard task when I already have a stack by my bed.

“Game Change” by two fine journalists, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, is such a book. I was hooked by the second page, checked it out, and read it over the week-end.  It’s a terrific account of what has got to be the most interesting presidential election of a lifetime.

The authors conducted thousands of interviews, and they fill us in on the nitty-gritty of all the candidates. It’s much more a book about personalities than government policies the candidates hoped to implement once in office. And to this non-political junkie, it read like a well-written novel.

It appears to be a fair book, where nobody comes out smelling like a rose.  Politicians have a huge ego. They are ambitious. And they need a loyal staff to bail them out of trouble when they say and do stupid things.

We learn that Obama was collected, calm, and cool on the stage while campaigning, but in private, was prone to flashes of anger that were heavily laced with cuss words.  And Michelle, often, just wanted to go home to Chicago to be with her girls.

John McCain and his wife fought in public, and there are reliable reports that she had a long-time Arizona boyfriend with whom she was often seen. The decision to choose Sarah Palin as a running mate turned out to be a huge error that McCain could not undo.

Hillary Clinton might have won the Democratic presidential nomination if her husband had stayed completely in the background. He couldn’t. And he offended Ted Kennedy with some racist remarks early on about Obama, so Kennedy endorsed Obama instead of Hillary.

After the election, Obama had to work hard to convince Hillary to be his Secretary of State. She first refused, reminding him that she could not control her husband, and that he might say something that would end up as an embarrassment to his administration.  He told her to sleep on her decision. She did. And she accepted.

In “The Politician” by Andrew Young, we get all the dirt on John Edwards, his wife Elizabeth, and his mistress Rielle Hunter. Young is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest School of Law. He’s no slouch as a writer, but it’s clear that he’s writing this tell-all book to make enough money to get out of debt.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Young. He was so enamored with Edwards that he lost track of his own life, and he even involved his wife and children in costly ways of protecting his boss. Everything he did was devoted to getting John Edwards elected president of the United States.

He joined Edwards’ staff in 1998 when Edwards ran for U.S. Senator from North Carolina, and he became one of Edward’s top advisors. He and his wife were treated like family. Eventually Young became an enabler to Edwards by hiding his affair with Rielle from the press, as well as from Sen. Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth.

There’s a bunch of good dirt in this book. Elizabeth is portrayed as a wife who openly belittled her husband, calling him a hick. She wanted to be the wife of the president of the United States, just as much as he wanted the presidency. In fact, she thought the “cancer factor” might get her husband some votes.

Andrew Young has been on television so much that there’s not much in the book that he hasn’t already told to audiences on every network. It wouldn’t be one you’d want to spend money on, but check it out at your library.

•••

Colonel J.R. Dallas, USAF Retired, is new to politics. He’s making his first bid for office by running on the Republican ticket for House of Representative, District 63.

J.R. grew up in Little Rock, attending Catholic High and playing sports there. He graduated from the Air Force Academy, and came to Fort Smith as wing commander of the 188th Fighter Squadron, a position he held for almost five years.

He now flies for American Airlines.

As a young boy, he read books on sports, and he particularly liked biographies of famous sport figures like Johnny Unitas and Roger Staubach. Now that he’s running for political office and building a new home, he doesn’t have much time to read. He enjoys fiction by Patrick Davis, a classmate of his at the Air Force Academy.

He is reading “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.”

Here’s hoping his venture into politics is a successful one for him, as well as those he represents.

Feedback
Contact Anita at [email protected]