A Pearl of Wisdom from President Obama: "We can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house."

Every presidential election for the last twentysomething years, Newsweek conducts its Special Elections Project, in which its writers embed with the campaigns and provide a "behind-the-scenes" expose of the race, from start (the primaries) to finish, on the condition that the report not be released until after the final vote. Considering this particular election took roughly three decades and was filled with some of the wackiest characters in modern politics, their backstage look at the 2008 race should be a fucking doozy -- and in reading through the first three of seven chapters published on their Web site today, it's proving to be extremely fascinating already.

We get to see the chaos inside the Hillary camp as her hope for the nomination got completely sideswiped by Rocketship Obama. We see the beginning stages of McCain's transformation from Mr. Straight Talk to whatever kind of weird mumbling he was doing by the end there. We get to see Obama stacking his pick-up basketball teams with Duke and Princeton players and kicking ass against the Illinois state treasurer. We learn that some in the Clinton camp referred to the private plane of one of Bill's buddies as "Air Fuck One." And we get to hear Obama say this in regards to a primary debate question from Brian Williams:

"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

(BTW, I love hearing Obama swear for some reason. It's the main reason I downloaded the audiobook of Dreams from My Father and listened to it on my drive from California to Portland. Yeah, it's touching and everything, but you haven't lived 'til you've heard our president elect say, in an impression of one of his high school friends, "You ain't my bitch, nigga.")

Newsweek also included a bulleted list of highlights from upcoming chapters, and let me just say, I can't wait for Palin to enter the picture, because -- as became clear with that "She's going rogue!" stuff that came out toward the end -- she sounds like a goddamn headache even for her own campaign:

- Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

- At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

- McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

There's also a note that Palin also spent way more than reported on her little shopping spree, and a pissed off aide gives us a classic line, referring to it as, "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." Speaking of Palin, I really hope John McCain writes a book or gives an in-depth interview about this election before he's gone for good, because based on his concession speech and another Newsweek nugget stating that he truly did not want to go negative in this campaign, I do believe he is a man of some integrity who just got completely crushed by the modern electoral process and was pressured by the GOP to go with the Moose Hunter as a running mate. He just seemed like a broken man this last month, and there was more relief than sadness in his eyes last night that this whole damn circus was finally over. I'd love to hear him speak candidly about it.

Either that, or just watch him and Hillary "[down] shots together," as Newsweek reports they did.