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...Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election By Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson 415 pages; Viking...
...Gist: It was an endless campaign - close to two years of political and cultural combat among a sprawling cast of presidential hopefuls that, eventually, led to a history-making Commander in Chief. Journalists Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson - current and former Washington Post reporters, respectively - capture the momentous contest in a polished account refreshingly free of last year's breathless soundbites, pundit insta-reaction or fixation on trifling gaffes (the maelstrom over President Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment warrants barely a mention). Instead, it provides an evenhanded and comprehensive account of the race, based on interviews with...
...Clinton ran a weak campaign organization - its top officials managed money poorly and apparently didn't grasp the intricacies of the primary caucus system until it was too late. But the book sheds new light on just how flawed and, in James Carville's term, "joyless" the team was. Balz and Johnson reveal that Clinton grew furious at her (soon-to-be-ousted) campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle after the Iowa caucuses when she seemed disturbingly comfortable with the prospect of her boss conceding the race to Obama. On a conference call the morning after her painful third-place finish...
...political pedigree and electrifying convention acceptance speech would dissipate as she increasingly appeared unprepared for the nation's No. 2 office. Top McCain strategist Steve Schmidt believed Palin's series of disastrous interviews with CBS' Katie Couric was "one of the worst performances ever" by a national political candidate (Balz and Johnson report that Palin put off preparing for the interview, oddly, to focus on completing a written questionnaire for a small Alaska newspaper, the Mat-su Valley Frontiersman). The Alaska governor touched off such turmoil and animosity within the campaign that, when it came to judging the varied allegations...
...useful experience. “I already have ideas about going back home and implementing things I’ve heard about,” he said. After discussing politics over dinner, attendees heard extensive analysis of the 2008 election from four leading political journalists—Dan Balz and Maralee Schwartz of the Washington Post, Kate Phillips of the New York Times, and Jim VandeHei of Politico.com. For students, the discussion was an occasion to evaluate the electoral chances of their preferred 2008 candidates. “It was really interesting for me, being from a swing state where...