The story shows how McCain's team hoped to advance his appeal with women voters by choosing a female running mate. After going through the political records of some female politicians, many whose views do not support those of McCain's, the team comes upon a fairly unknown Alaskan politician, Sarah Palin. On paper she seems to reflect all the values McCain's campaign needs--a mother, a conservative, a Christian, and better yet, she says she is willing to support some of McCain's views which do not entirely agree with her own.
After a hasty vetting of her record and past, Palin is revealed to the world publicly in a splashy convention. Her downhome sentiments and "hockey mom" image at first play right into the sort of voter McCain wants. But as the team tries to mold her into the potential vice president they hope she will be, her faults come to light and in a big way. Palin's knowledge of world events, nay, even those outside Alaska, are dim or non-existent. Fairly basic government terms are unheard of in her vocabulary. Soon she becomes too big for her britches, claiming she is the one bringing in the donors, and not McCain. Her choice has been a big risk, and although it could have worked, the film shows she was the component that derailed the campaign and most likely the one who brought McCain's presidential hopes to an end.
Although it portrays Palin mostly in a bad light, due for the most part to her own failings, it does at times offer a bit of a sympathetic human portrait of her for non-believers. I can see where a novice to the world stage can be overwhelmed, heck anyone would be overwhelmed when trotted out for the public and managed to the extent that she was--to be away from her family, to overwhelm her with studying for debates, to be untrue to herself. But she didn't help herself by not making an honest effort to "play the game;" whether she just didn't like to or her personality just wasn't true to that sort of style, both sentiments are expressed in the film. But for someone who would potentially take a very powerful job, I don't think she understood or wanted to understand what the job required of her, and only wanted to take the accolades given to her by the public--she didn't seem to want to work to get professional opinions on her side as much as she courted the voter.
The film reveals that at times when she is overwhelmed, she becomes unresponsive and catatonic and insiders (such as Ron Livington as an advisor) ask if she might be mentally unbalanced, or point out that she is potentially one heart attack away from being President, and that she boldly and publicly lies about certain facts. We already know through publicly available interviews and appearances that she has no knowledge of affairs outside of Alaska, and she is pretty laughable and scary at those moments. When she is "on" she can speak passionately in homey terms to and about American values, but otherwise her answers are due to a lot of coaching and memorizing and not any understanding of the issue being addressed at all. It is scary to think how close we could have been to have McCain/Palin in the White House, if she had tried a little harder.
Moore does an good job in the role, most of it is the hair, glasses and Palin's speaking style. Harrelson's character seemed a bit weak for me, and for this actor. Schmidt, although courted by McCain to take the job, at times seems to be over his head and bitten off more than he can chew, and not a decisive leader as I would expect him to be. Other characters, such as that played by Peter MacNichol, make key decisions (he selected Palin in the first place after researching other female politicians whose policies did not match McCain's); McCain is hands off and even at seminal moments still refuses to address the problem or placate Palin--he only sees her as a device in his campaign and not an ally, at least not really in a human way. The film also does not really address any of his personal and political faults at all--he comes off as a patriotic veteran and beloved American whose campaign was derailed by Palin's behavior. Missteps are made on all sides, but bold moves too.
Other costars include Sarah Paulson (communications officer for the campaign and wife to Ron Livingston's character, although she has the bigger role, and at times emotionally affected by her involvement), Jamey Sheridan (speechwriter, didn't do much with this role). Austin Pendleton has a small role as Joe Lieberman; one of his scenes got cut where he prays with Palin at a moment of stress for her.
Based on a book, where the author interviewed a lot of people involved, and the screenwriter did the same; I believe the book was more comprehensive of the election, whereas the movie focused more on Palin as that was the most interesting facet of the election to make a movie out of. The screenwriter (who also wrote the movie Recount for HBO) said Schmidt was the only one of the three main characters who viewed the movie and Schmidt said it was accurate.
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