Dear Commons Community,

Last Saturday, HBO aired its controversial movie, Game Change,  on Sarah Palin’s run for vice president in 2008.  Due to popular demand, HBO has been rerunning the movie every night since.  MSNBC interviewed two of the principal players on the McCain/Palin team last night – Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt – both of whom verified the depictions in the movie.

Today in the Daily News,  columnist Richard Cohen provided his critique. Cohen does not hold back in his comments:

“At some point while watching HBO’s absolutely smashing movie “Game Change,” it occurred to me that Sarah Palin has ruined America. .. With her selection as John McCain’s running mate, American politics lost its way.

The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden,” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not Al Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

At the same time, she was a liar. In the movie, she was called exactly that by McCain’s campaign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to realize that one of Palin’s great talents was to deny the truth.”

Cohen goes on to comment on several of this year’s “dysfunctional” Republican nominees – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, etc.  all of whom were seriously lacking.  He concludes:

“So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these may no longer matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.”

If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you are at all interested in our government, it is well worth the two hours.

Tony