My friends made me watch it last night. It was much better than I'd been led to believe (memo to self: try to resist Pareene-bait). Capturing Palin in all her clinical crazy is not easy. And there's no way the movie could have included coverage of Palin's life and career previous to her being selected via Google. Without that record of constant lying, melodrama, and vindictiveness, the movie has to adopt the plot device of the movie Dave, in which a total stranger to politics is somehow spirited into the Oval Office.
The key figure is Schmidt. Harrelson does extremely well – but he doesn't get Steve's accent or bluster as well as he does his Catholic remorse and frustration. Culvahouse is rightly singled out as arguably the most incompetent vetter in the history of political vetting. And the dawning awareness that this woman "doesn't know anything" is funny in retrospect, however terrifying it was at the time. Hence the unprecedented media blackout.
The Trig question? I think the movie did a great job in exploring what we know – and didn't pretend this wasn't a key issue in the drama at the time. The issue was the off-the-record central one as the news of her nomination rippled across the political universe, and the movie shows the press actually asking questions about it – something that never came through in the mainstream media at the time. And those questions remained unanswered, despite being asked.
A nice touch: John Heilemann himself asks the final unanswered question on the bizarre details Palin provided on Trig's labor and birth. Make of that what you will.
The Dish 