Ah, the 2008 campaign. Who wouldn’t want to relive it? John Heilemann and Mark Halperin dig up several juicy new tidbits in Game Change, to be released shortly. Marc Ambinder on the Edwards campaign:
I don’t want to give away the whole book… but I would be remiss if I did not point to the chapters about the unbelievably dysfunctional husband and wife team of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not only, it turns out, did many senior Edwards staffer suspect that John was having an affair, several confronted John Edwards about it, and came away believing the rumors. At least three campaign aides resigned because of their knowledge of the affair well before the national media picked up on those early National Enquirer stories.
And John and Elizabeth (who the book says was known to Edwards insiders as an “abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending, crazywoman”) fought, in front of staffers, about the affair. The authors describe a moment where Elizabeth, in a such a state of fury, deliberately tears her blouse in the parking lot of a Raleigh airport terminal, “exposing herself. ‘Look at me,” she wailed at John and then staggered, nearly falling to the ground.”
And Jeff Zeleny on Sarah Palin:
In the days leading up to an interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson, aides were worried with Ms. Palin’s grasp of facts. She couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and she did not know what the Federal Reserve did. She also said she believed Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
It looks like there’s going to be plenty of other blog fodder in the book as well. Bill Clinton was having an affair. (Maybe.) Harry Reid said something slightly impolitic. George Bush didn’t think much of John McCain’s campaign. Etc. Should be good for 24 or maybe even 48 hours worth of nonstop cable coverage.
