Game Change

I'm not going to be in the business of the factual content of the HBO movie, but it did leave me with the following feelings:

1) John McCain is a good man, and probably would have made a decent president
2) I felt really bad (surprisingly) for Sarah Palin. Except towards the end.
3) There were three Sarah Palins in the movie:

The first one is "the team player." The first Sarah we meet just wants to do right by her family, Alaska, the American People, and John McCain. A true patriot.

As the movie develops, Sarah begins to succumb to the pressure. You start to feel really bad for her. She wasn't treated fairly. She starts tuning out her handlers. She misses her family. She just can't physically learn everything she needs to learn in the given amount of time to do it in--it's just too much.

Finally, the McCain campaign created the monster. Once they realize she's a brilliant actress but a crappy politician, they give her the script to her success. She does well in the VP debate, regains her confidence, realizes how much she is loved and how much cash she is bringing to the campaign, and her ego takes over. She begins to think she is bigger than she is.

Ultimately, it paints Palin as far more likeable than I've ever found her to be for 2/3 of the movie (albeit they do portray her as somewhat of a foreign policy idiot, which I don't think is a stretch), and only giving way to the unlikeable psychopath we came to know and love towards the end.

Both McCain and Palin aides have come out against the book and the movie, saying it is chock full of unattributed quotes and inaccuracies. McCain stated he will not watch the film and I believe him. I cannot say the same about Palin--while she is on the record as saying she considers it a false narrative, I don't think her ego will allow her to pass on the chance to watch a movie about her.