Film / Game Change

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Game Change is a 2012 Made for HBO film adapted from the 2010 non-fiction book of the same name, covering the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain, from the perspective of McCain's campaign. It was directed by Jay Roach and stars Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, Ed Harris as McCain, and Woody Harrelson as McCain's senior campaign strategist Steve Schmidt. The script was written by Danny Strong.

Schmidt rejects McCain's VP pick of Senator Joe Liebermann (Austin Pendleton), and persuades him to choose Sarah Palin, the relatively obscure Governor of Alaska, as his "game changer" running mate. Unfortunately, this proves to be a mistake. Palin is vain, abrasive, and incredibly ignorant of what her duties would be - but just as popular as they intended her to be.

Game Change contains examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Right after Steve tells one of his colleagues to stop making fun of Dick Cheney, who he thinks is "misunderstood", he has to stop himself from laughing at the next joke. ("How does he eat wearing Darth Vader's mask?")
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba:
  Rick Davis: Who knows, we could have another Dewey-Truman situation here...always room for an upset.
  Steve Schmidt: Maybe I'll wake up with a full head of hair.
• Attention Whore: Palin is so concerned about her status in Alaska that she demands they do a poll despite the fact it costs $60,000 and the campaign has half the funds of Obama's. What's worse, she wasn't even running for re-election at the time, her term ended in 2010. After her successful performance at the Vice Presidential debate against Joe Biden, her attitude only gets worse. It should be noted that in reality, the poll itself makes more sense in context that isn't provided; given the state of Alaskan state politics and the rampant mutinees in the Republican base over McCain and/or Palin, it was essentially meant to see whether Palin's "base state" was secure. This was for the same reason it's wise for a general to make sure the enemy isn't running amok in their base while they're away: to keep a safe location and source of support, and avoid potential scandals popping up where they can least afford them.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Averted, the Palins are portrayed as perfectly normal, loving people thrust into a very unnerving situation.
• Blatant Lies: Palin claiming to reporters that she was cleared in the "TrooperGate" investigation, when in fact she was censured for it. Schmidt calls her out on this. In real life, this was a bit more contentious and subject to controversy behind the scenes; she was indeed censured by one report, but this report was under suspicion for being a politically motivated hatchet job since many of those who did it were political allies of Obama (or at least enemies of Palin). A later report- by an attempt at a bipartisan/nonpolitical investigation- exonerated her.
• Bookends: Steve Schmidt's interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes.
• Brutal Honesty: Steve has to resort to this to get anything through Palin's head, due to her Never My Fault attitude. At first he is direct but kind, but he gets less understanding as the film goes on and she becomes harder to control. One notable example:
  Steve: Governor, the Katie Couric interview didn't go well. And it wasn't Nicolle Wallace's fault. It wasn't Katie Couric's fault. It wasn't the liberal media's fault. It was your fault, because you didn't prepare. And there can never be another instance of something not going well because you didn't prepare.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Schmidt wanted to sit out the 2008 cycle, but McCain convinced him to re-join.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Steve: I have been asked when her amniotic fluid started to leak with regard to her last birth. It's shameful.
  Reporter: So when did it start leaking?
• Cluster F-Bomb: McCain's way of speaking. Keep in mind that McCain was a Navy pilot, and the phrase "cursing like a drunken sailor" has become proverbial: Navy men tend to curse very casually. According to people that knew McCain, that's just the register of how he spoke. He did try to restrain it when in public.
• Description Cut: When McCain is favoring Lieberman early on, Schmidt warns they'll have to keep it top-secret or the right-wing of the Republican Party will sink the pick - cut to a montage of news reporters lambasting the choice.
• Dragon with an Agenda: By the end of it Palin starts openly flouting the McCain line, criticizing the decision to withdraw from Michigan and refusing to appear in ads for policies she opposes. She even starts to overshadow the man himself due to her ability to galvanize the Republican base.
  Palin: I am raising millions of dollars for this campaign. Hundreds of thousands of people are coming to see me speak. Not John McCain, god bless him. They are coming to see me, so if I am single-handedly carrying this "campaign", I'm gonna do what I want.
• The Dreaded: Obama's charisma makes him this to the McCain political team. One of the first scenes is them watching footage of Obama's speech in Berlin, the sheer size of the crowd is made to look a little terrifying.
  John McCain: If he heals a sick baby, we're really fucked.
• Everyone Has Standards: Said by one of the campaign managers: "You know what Dick Cheney said when he found out you picked her?...He said we made a reckless choice. When you lose the moral high ground to Dick Cheney, it's time to re-think your entire life."
• Film of the Book
• Foreshadowing: After Steve searches for potential female vice president candidates and watches a clip where Palin is interviewed by Charlie Rose and gives a well-worded response to a question, we see her telling the exact same thing word for word to a constituent, hinting at her being better at memorizing lines than actually knowing the substance behind them.
• Freak Out: After the infamous Katie Couric interview Palin kind of goes into a downward spiral and people start worrying about her mental health (or questioning if she was mentally healthy to begin with). It doesn't help that Palin blames her campaign manager for not prepping her despite the fact it's her own fault she didn't "study".
• The Ghost: Barack Obama never appears in person in the movie, and is only shown sparingly in stock footage. Oddly enough, McCain's in-film depiction is superimposed on real-life news reports over his real-life face, but no such treatment is given to Obama. Justified in that the movie portrays McCain barely even interactive.
• The Gift: Even her harshest critics can't disagree that Palin has a special talent for connecting with voters on rope lines and in her solo speeches.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • McCain tells his crew they're going to be adults in this election — cut to them laughing like schoolboys at this YouTube video mocking John Edwards, another early contender in 2008. Even more funny when you consider that all three men watching the video (one of which was a member of Edwards' own party) served with Edwards in the Senate.
  • When Palin's advisers warn her they'll have to prepare for when the press starts sniffing around about Palin's past and personal life:
    Palin: Oh gosh, I can't think of anything I haven't already disclosed...
    [cut to Schmidt surrounded by reporters bombarding him with questions about Palin]
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Palin's way of speaking, conversely from McCain's Cluster F-Bomb manner of speaking.
• Graceful Loser:
  • McCain, once the returns are in, is understanding, and says Schmidt doesn't need to apologize for recommending Palin as his running mate; they gave the campaign everything they got, they lost, and now it's time to move on.
  • Schmidt makes clear to Palin that the concession speech is given by the presidential candidate, and for her (the vice-presidential candidate) to give a concession speech would diminish McCain. He tells her that the concession speech is a "proud American tradition", and showing that the unsuccessful candidate accepts the results of an election without complaining or hogging the spotlight has been baked into the pie of democracy since the Founding Fathers.
• Hands-Off Parenting: McCain has very little interaction with Palin and at the end he's no longer sure he can control her.
• Happily Married: Sarah and Todd's only scene together shows him providing moral support that she counts on.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Both Steve Schmidt and John McCain arguably. Schmidt was more interested into turning Palin into a "celebrity" to combat Obama's popularity that he completely neglected the fact that she was completely ignorant to politics. McCain completely turned a blind eye to her spotlight seeking.
• Hope Spot:
  • The Vice Presidential debate is depicted as this for the McCain camp. Upon seeing Palin handle the debate calmly and with renewed energy, with almost no gaffes, Steve and the others think they can still win. However, almost immediately after is when they begin bringing up Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers out of desperation, causing the campaign to nose dive into batshit crazy with Palin at the center.
  • For all the craziness that Palin is putting them through, Schmidt and Wallace both shine when McCain takes back the microphone from a racist supporter claiming that Obama is "a Arab" and not a real American, and firmly tells her no, Obama is a "decent family man citizen" who happens to be on the opposing side. Even with Palin attached, they can feel that they're working to elect the right man as President, and they can do it on character and accomplishments rather than mud-slinging.
• Hypocrite: When lambasting Palin for lying to the press, Schmidt tells her that resorting to Blatant Lies is not the kind of campaign they were running. Even outside of Palin’s own behavior, the campaign made many misleading or false claims, and Schmidt had previously worked for George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign which was equally guilty of this.
• Hypocritical Humor: Steve tells McCain to stop watching Countdown With Keith Olbermann and MSNBC, because "it's all just bullshit." Then Steve quickly turns off his TV, which is tuned to Fox News, which is just as biased as what McCain was watching, just towards the other party.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Steve Schmidt thinks long and hard about the pros and cons of selecting Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate, but ultimately decides, "I'd rather lose by ten points going for the win than lose by one point and look back and say, 'goddamn, we should have gone for the win!'" He comes to profoundly regret it later.
  • On Election Night, Nicolle Wallace breaks down in tears and confesses to Steve Schmidt that she couldn't bring herself to vote for McCain, her own party's candidate, because the idea of Palin succeeding him as President was too scary to contemplate. Schmidt hugs her and says he understands completely.
• The Ingenue: Palin (and Obama, although he's not the focus of the film).
• Implausible Deniability: When Steve comments that Todd Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party for seven years, Sarah responds that he checked the wrong box, because people can hold the completely wrong party registration for multiple years. There are actually cases in which this happened, even if it is incredibly unlikely: Todd might honestly have checked the wrong box and not noticed he'd registered with the Independence Party for years. Such mistakes have been known to happen. What Palin lies about is that she tells Steve that Todd checked the wrong box "and rectified the error immediately". Todd checking the wrong box isn't "implausible" - what Steve is angry about is that it is a blatant lie to claim that he fixed it "immediately" when the indisputable, recorded fact is that he at the least didn't notice it until seven years later - and that even if the accusation is trivial, making an implausible lie to deny it altogether is drastically worse.
• Irony:
  • Steve Schmidt had previously worked on George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. Now that he’s on the McCain team, he advises him to pick a VP who gives him distance from the increasingly-unpopular Bush.
  • McCain criticizes Obama for his lack of experience and "star power." His team later disregards other looked at options such as Meg Whitman (lots of business experience), Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas (15 years in the Senate at the time), and Susan Collins from Maine (11 years in the Senate, though admittedly not very charismatic) in favor of Palin despite her (relative) lack of political experience (4 years on the city council, then 6 years as mayor of a mildly populated city, and then a year and a half as the governor of one of the most sparsely populated states in the country) because she's charismatic and gun-toting. And milfy.
• It's Personal: McCain is very reluctant to use Rev. Jeremiah Wright against Obama because it reminds him of when George W. Bush smeared him by accusing him of having a black daughter out of wedlock (the girl in question was actually an adoptee from Bangladesh).
• It Will Never Catch On: "[48 hours after the election] no one will know who Sarah Palin is." Though she hasn't held elected office since, Sarah remained at least tangentially relevant in Right Wing American politics through to 2022, when she unsuccessfully ran for Alaska's at-large seat in the House of Representatives.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope:
  • Averted at first. McCain refuses to bring up Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers to attack Obama, and only very reluctantly does so late in the campaign, after reminding his team about when he suffered a personal smear back in 2000. There's also some foreshadowing to the Tea Party, which would rise in Obama's first term.
    Rick Davis: South Carolina was an ugly primary, but this isn't the same thing! I'm mean, Rev. Wright really did say these things!
    John McCain: That may be true. But there's a dark side to American populism. Some folks win elections by tapping into it. I'm not one of those people.
  • Before the Vice Presidential debate, Steve Schmidt says the campaign staff's best bet is to focus on giving Palin "talking points" to memorize, and admits that trying to get her to actually understand any of the issues she'll be talking about was a waste of time. In that one statement, he's reconciled himself to the fact that his job is to go all-out in getting Palin into a post for which she is (in his view) spectacularly unqualified.
• The Last DJ: John McCain gets portrayed as one, being old fashioned in a sense that he no longer has a chance to compete against the charismatic Obama.
  John McCain: They used to love me, Steve. Now they're lighting me up like it's goddamn Mardi Gras.
• Mama Bear: Palin gets especially upset when her family is bashed by the media, and she did not want to say she and Todd were "proud to be grandparents" after their teen daughter's pregnancy is revealed (she's not too thrilled about seeing baby-daddy Levi either: "I see you cut off your mullet").
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Steve says it almost word-for-word ("what have we done?") watching Palin's disastrous interview with Katie Couric.
  • When it's clear that they're going to lose, Steve can barely get the words out as he apologizes to McCain for suggesting Palin as his running mate. McCain, for his part, is very understanding.
  • McCain has one when he realizes he's whipped up racism and xenophobia in his base by going negative on Obama.
• Naïve Newcomer: Palin (and Obama, although he's not the focus of the film).
• Never My Fault: Palin, particularly after the disastrous Couric interview, when she gets into a heated argument on the phone with Wallace about it. In all fairness, Palin is a local politician and it was the campaign's fault for selecting her as McCain's running mate, so she could have made the humble defense that there's only so much preparation she could do for questions about national issues in a matter of weeks. Instead, her actual response is:
  Palin: Nicolle, it wasn't my fault! I wasn't... properly... prepped!
  Wallace: You weren't properly prepped because you wouldn't listen to us! You never listen to your advisers!
  Palin: Because you're overwhelming me with too much information!
• New Media Are Evil: Thanks to YouTube and the 24 hour news networks none of the candidates get any relief from criticism and mockery (even from Fox News!). Ironically Palin was picked partially because she looked good on YouTube.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Many of these occur among the campaign workers during their various dealings with Palin.
  • Schmidt has one when he tries to quiz Palin with a simple policy question about maintaining America's alliance with Britain; she gives a rote answer about the U.S.'s good relationship with the Queen, and looks baffled when he points out that the Prime Minister, not the Queen, is the head of the British government.
  • McCain has one when an angry supporter calls Obama a "terrorist" at a rally in New Mexico.
  • Schmidt has an even worse one when another supporter yells for Obama to be killed.
• Outdoorsy Gal: Sarah uses her time in Sedona to take mind-clearing morning runs and rehearse her debate lines while sitting in a tree.
• Pretender Diss:
  • At one point, Palin compares herself to Hillary Rodham Clinton — who, whatever her faults, is indisputably^note well-respected Senator, called one of the finest modern Secretaries of State in American history, and the first woman to be the presidential nominee of a major political party in 2016 one of the most politically accomplished women in American history. Nicolle Wallace is extremely unimpressed, and makes that quite clear.
    Palin: I am not your puppet! Now I understand what Hillary meant when she said she had to find her own voice!
    Wallace: Yeah. 'Cause you're just like Hillary.
  • Inverted when Rick Davis tries to pull one of these on Obama, saying all he has is "star power", which is why they need a "star" like Palin to counteract his influence. Steve Schmidt cheerlessly reminds him that Obama actually has substance to go with his style (he was a Constitutional law professor), while Palin... doesn't. ^note  Under other circumstances, Palin's status as Governor of Alaska might have been leveraged as more relevant experience than Obama's status as a freshman U.S. Senator, but Palin's media appearances only hung twin lampshades on Obama's surprising grasp of domestic and foreign policy issues, and her own tenuous understanding of anything outside her home state.
  • When Palin insists on giving her own concession speech after the election, Schmidt reminds her that McCain was the candidate, and she was his running mate - which, since they've lost the election, makes her nobody.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Steve's shutdown of Palin toward the end of the movie is full of this.
  Steve: You, Sarah Palin, will not change the importance of this proud. American. Tradition.
• Reaction Shot: The staff members are regularly displaying an appalled face right after some ignorant, outlandish or inappropriate stuff comes out of Palin's mouth.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: McCain; he doesn't want to use Rev. "God Damn America!" Wright against Obama and he's really disturbed when people start saying Obama is a Muslim Socialist or call for his death.
• Running Gag: Senator "O'Biden". This really happened and it was yet another of Palin's frustrating "quirks": she kept combining the names of Obama and his running mate Biden...even after being warned about it for weeks, she physically could not break this verbal habit. The cameras caught her asking Joe Biden right before the Vice Presidential debate, "Can I call you Joe?" - which was actually because behind the scenes, she was worried that she'd make the Biden-O'Biden gaffe again on camera, despite being fully aware of it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Palin's Freak Out over the phone to Nicolle Wallace, blaming her for the disastrous Katie Couric interview, Wallace calmly dials Steve Schmidt and tells him that she's happy to take the blame and be fired from the campaign, if it means never having to deal with Palin again.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Sarah Palin, both in-universe and meta-wise. The book was on the 2008 campaign in general, the movie focuses on Sarah Palin's role in the Republican campaign. In the movie, Palin is portrayed as an Attention Whore who goes so far as to prepare her own concession speech and has to be told by Schmidt that A) failed vice-presidential candidates don't give concession speeches and B) she is not going steal the attention away from the election of the first African-American president of the United States.
• Start X to Stop X: As stated in The Dreaded, Obama was such a charismatic speaker that the McCain Campaign decided that the only way they would stand a chance is if they could get someone equally charismatic as McCain's running mate. The problem though, as Schmidt would later put it:
  Steve Schmidt: Primary difference being Sarah Palin can't name a Supreme Court decision, whereas Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After Palin's debate with Biden her confidence soars and she starts making unplanned statements to reporters, contradicting McCain's policies about stem cell research despite saying she wouldn't, and most importantly, even wants to make her own concession speech on election night. As Schmidt sternly explains to her, no Vice Presidential candidate has ever given their own concession speech in all of American history, and her request is shockingly arrogant. She counters that traditions change. True, the first black man was just elected president - but Schmidt explains that the concession speech is a solemn occasion to cement American democracy (the US wasn't prone to starting civil wars when one side loses an election because the losing side always respects the election results). Palin can't seem to understand that even if there is no official reason she can't give her own concession speech, that purely from a public relations perspective the press would tear her apart for being self-centered if she gave one. Her behavior is so aggravating that even her own campaign manager couldn't vote for her.
• Tragic Mistake: The framing of the scene where McCain makes the decision to pick Palin. It's never stated or implied that he would have won without her. But the stakes are laid out plainly for him. When the question is put to John:
  Mark Salter: You might not only lose the election, John. You just might lose your reputation right along with it.
  John McCain [Beat] I'm not running for my reputation. I'm running to be President.
  • Steve Schmidt personally apologizes to McCain for recommending Palin after he's lost the election. McCain, for his part, holds no grudge.
    McCain: Fuck 'em. What were we supposed to do?
• Troubled Production: invoked The campaign gets shades of this in a very bad way once Palin comes aboard.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Palin is criticized for the lavish shopping spree the GOP sent her on when she was to be elevated into the national spotlight.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: A common accusation. While a lot of the events and politicking are accurate, a lot of them are at best...dubious. A basic rule of thumb is the more a given fact focuses on Palin, the less likely it is to be reliable.
• Viewers Are Morons: In-Universe.
  • In fairness to Palin, one newscaster says most Americans probably can't name a Supreme Court decision, explain why North and South Korea are separate countries, or understand the difference between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. She then adds that the problem is most Americans aren't running for Vice President of the United States.
  • Rick Davis says the entire American voting public has been reduced to a Reality Show audience, that you need "star power" to win, and that none of the great American presidents of the past, including Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, could get elected these days because the voting public doesn't want statesmen or lawmakers anymore, it wants men and women who look good on TV. Schmidt cheerlessly responds that if that's the case, they're really screwed, because Obama has star power and credentials as a lawmaker, while Palin's star power only seems to highlight her lack of any other qualifications for the second-highest office in the country.
• You Are in Command Now: As McCain leaves to give his concession speech, he tells Palin that she is now one of the leading members of the Republican Party and to not let people like Rush Limbaugh rip it apart.