Game Change

I hate writing posts on books that I haven't read yet, but Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime is causing such a stir in the blogosphere that it necessitates a quick post.

Game Change sounds like it's worth a read. It's full of new gossip that political junkies like myself eat up. There's the Reid comment about Obama's light skin, Palin's stupidity, and revelations on the Edwards marriage. For more, check out Marc Ambinder, Michiko Kakutani, Politico, and several Huff Post posts. Here's an excerpt of the book on the Edwards.

At the end of his post, Marc Ambinder pissed off the political science bloggers by saying that political scientists wouldn't like the book, because it portrays politics as messy and unpredictable, rather than governed by theory and numbers. John Sides and Dan Drezner respond.

I'm not sure that political scientists should be pissed off by Ambinder's remark. Sure, he shouldn't have written that they/we wouldn't be interested in this book. It's looks good to me. I couldn't stop reading that Edwards excerpt in New York magazine. But his point about the difficulty of building theories when dealing with randomness and personalities is fair.

One thought on “Game Change

  1. I haven’t read the book either, but I always feel like books about campaign strategies and personalities actually vindicate the possibility of political science. Elections normally produce very little change in the governance of America, which to me indicates that the determination of which of the universe of theoretical political possibilities is realized must occur elsewhere.
    That Edwards, what a scumbag. Also inexcusable is the way the mainstream media covered up for him. I don’t feel guilty about having canceled our Times subscription and relying on the internet for all my news, but, if I did, reading about the Edwards episode would cure my guilt.

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