Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

If you think all these terrible things about Obama, he asked the woman, how can you possibly be undecided? Because if McCain dies, Palin would be president, she said.

We are the makers of history, not its victims.

You have two choices, [Plouffe] told Obama. You can stay in the Senate, enjoy your weekends at home, take regular vacations, and have a lovely time with your family. Or you can run for president, have your whole life poked at and pried into, almost never see your family, travel incessantly, bang your tin cup for donations like some street-corner beggar, lead a lonely, miserable life.

Asked who attacked America on 9/11, [Sarah Palin] suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein.

Keep your head down. Avoid the limelight. Get on the right committees. Go to hearings. Do your homework. Build up a substantive portfolio. And never forget the care and feeding of the people who sent you here.

The unfolding scene was a semiotician's fantasia.

For the next ten days, Hillary would come at Obama, guns blazing, armed with a line that, in the context of her new persona, was so well pitched and perfectly modulated that it almost sounded like poetry.

...The campaign was moving cash around the country as if it were monopoly money.

He had just gotten word that the apocalypse was nigh.

At that moment, though, she stood there on stage, perched atop a pair of ruby-red heels, looking less like Eliza Doolittle than Dorothy; the girl swept up in the cyclone, lifted out of her black-and-white world and deposited in a Technicolor Oz.

...New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, qualified for the label -- but he was a divorced, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun, Jewish plutocrat who had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to Independent as nonchalantly as if he'd been changing his loafers.

For the next ten days, Romney campaigned like a conservative in carnation of Bill Clinton circa 1992.

The press would've guillotined her on the spot and played soccer with her severed head.

John Kerry was saddled with more baggage than a curbside porter at Dulles airport.

Three days later, after the Chris Cox episode, a friend emailed Obama asking what he thought explained McCain’s wild swings and oscillations. “No fucking discipline,” Obama replied. As

On New Year’s Day, Hillary and Bill were out on a boat, bobbing along on the blue-green sea, and decided to take a swim. They leapt into the water, swam up to the beach, and then Hillary posed the question directly to the person who knew her best—and who understood as well as anyone alive what running for president entailed. What should I do, Bill? she asked. Should I do this or not? You have to ask yourself one question, he replied. Of all the people running, would I be the best president? If you can answer yes, then you need to run. If you’re not sure, then you need to think more about it, and if the answer is no, don’t do it. That’s all I can tell you, Bill said. Not long after, Solis Doyle’s phone rang back in Washington. “Bill said that if I really feel like I can do this, and do a good job and be the best one, then I should do it,” Hillary said. “And I do believe that.” Solis Doyle exhaled and smiled. “Okay! Let’s go, then!” Patti said, and they were finally off and running.

FUCK YOU! FUCK, FUCK, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!!” McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry; she had interrupted him. Cindy burst into tears, but, really, she should have been used to it by now.

Most puzzling was his timidity. Giuliani was supposed to be a tough guy, but in the face of attacks by his opponents, his performance had been as limp as an overcooked Chinatown noodle.