What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer

About six weeks ago the good folks at Amazon ran a special in which this seminal political book was available for the Kindle at some ridiculously low price. Long having had it on my to read list I picked it up.

Much as been written about this book over the years. Following in the tradition of Teddy White's The Making of the President Series, only with much more detail and personal history, Cramer's book has for almost two decades been considered the gold standard of political campaign reporting.

In an odd and sad twist when I had made my way about halfway through the book the author, still a relatively young man at 62, passed away. As the tributes flowed in fast and furious if there was any doubt of the importance of what I was reading it soon disappeared.

The book is quite simply a stunning description of the 1988 political race for the Presidency. Following six candidates, four Democrats and the two Republican frontrunners Kramer tells the story of the race through each campaigns eyes as well as providing a significant biography and personal history of each man.

There is much to take away from the book, much indeed, but if anyone is to take away any one thing it is this. The process by which we choose a President, the amount of power the press has to determine the agenda and in many respects the outcome, is beyond measure and out of control. This my friends was in 1988. Imagine now, almost 25 years later how much worse it would be.

It is interesting to note that upon his death how many reporters and members of the media praised this man who, by my estimation, had a great deal of frustration with the role of the press in the campaign.

Reading this book I was struck by a few incidents and stories. To try to offer a view of the book in any detail is beyond a book review or blog post. The book is over one thousand pages, one suspects that is why the initial reviews upon it's release were not that good, the press is and has become, by and large, lazy. Much easier to criticize a book as long winded and filled with minutiae than read it. Over time however the book took hold, people realized how special it was.

It should become a lesson for would be reporters and would be political candidates, a how not to do it if you will. By looking at our press today one suspects however that while they respect the work the lessons are soon lost in the heat of the moment.

If you do not remember on the Republican side that year it was the sitting Vice President George Bush the first versus Kansas Senator Bob Dole. By the end of the book it is very apparent that Cramer had a strong affinity for both these men and their basic goodness. It is surprising in fact to look back, with the benefit of twenty five years of history to see how these two good men, good public servants, truly did not like each other.

Their back stories could not have been different. Poor in Kansas or rich on the East Coast, yet both their parents raised them right. Both served their country heroically. Bush was shot down as a young pilot, Dole suffered life threatening and life changing injuries. Both were party men through the rise and fall of Nixon, both lost to Reagan in 1980 and both considered 1988 their last chance at the Presidency.


On the Democratic side there were a multitude of candidates but it was a truly cannibalistic affair. It was here that the press was out of control. The frontrunner as the field was set was Gary Hart. Hart who had lost to Mondale in 1984 seemed filled with destiny. Resigning his Senate seat in 1986 so he could concentrate full time on the Presidency Hart ended up run out of the race because of as Cramer puts it " the Karacter issue." The scenes of the press as they set upon Hart are truly disturbing. The pack mentality is something that should make anyone, left or right, uncomfortable. The most disturbing thing in the whole story of Gary Hart is how incredibly talented he was. How he was ready to be President, how he had a plan beyond anything any of the other candidates even thought about. Yet, he lost it all. He made mistakes but the press ruined him. One has to wonder if some of the men that Cramer profiles on the press side ever forgave him for showing their unattractive sides.

Joe Biden, our Vice President was also in that race. Just as he was catching fire Biden blew up over the plagiarism charges. Even though he had credited the British politician Neil Kinnock when using the line in previous speeches Biden did not in one speech and the story took hold. There might never have been a man better suited to be President. As he rose in the polls the squeaky clean campaign of Mike Dukakis leaked tapes of Biden speaking and blew the whistle on the Kinnock story. Biden was at worst sloppy but it was a ridiculous story and if anything the laziness of the press in the destruction of Joe Biden was even worse.

Dukakis is portrayed as just what he was. A highly moral, holier than thou Greek American who had been a highly successful Governor who believed in the process. He was aghast when the Biden leak came back to his staff. One has no doubt believing he did not know, but yet he just cannot come across as likable. In retirement as I wrote he is still the same man, proper and good. Yet there is no doubt that his refusal to be a politician, his inability to relate cost him the Presidency.

I write last about Richard Gephardt because his story is probably the most moving in the book. This man who seemed destined for great things. This man who was the ideal Democrat, the liberal. He lost. And as I wrote recently in my political blog there is no example in modern politics of a man who has sold his soul more worse than Richard Gephardt. Read this book and look at all of Gephardt's issues and core concerns. Then look at who he lobbies for today and what sides he has worked for and against in his career since leaving Congress. It is the worst story you will hear this week, this month, this year, it is bad enough to be a bad politician, what Gephardt has done is akin to the Devil being kicked out of Heaven, He is a political Judas. Disgusting in the extreme.

Carve out some time before the next round of Presidential politics. This book should be read before 2016. Then you will have the knowledge of a race 28 years ago, and see how little has changed. In a sense 1988 was the beginning of the end, any leftover regard for the Presidency, much in decline after Watergate, was gone after Reagan left office, after Hart and Biden were run out of office. Four years later we had Bill Clinton who unlike Hart survived his mistakes but it has never been the same. In today's world there is always chum in the water. Richard Ben Cramer describes when any luster in running for the Presidency was lost for good.

The President's Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

This recently published book explores the relationships between the current and former Presidents in the modern age. Since Harry Truman was elected relationships between Presidents have become an integral part of the success of those in office. With modern medicine and many younger men being elected President we have scene at various times the President's Club grow to as many as six when Bill Clinton was President.

Harry Truman began the modern day President's club when he brought Herbert Hoover back into the service of the country. Hoover, an outcast in the FDR years, had been a hero long before his Presidency, his efforts in food relief and distribution in World War I made him an easy choice for Truman to use in saving Europe after the second war.

Not all relationships have been as smooth. Eisenhower and Truman had a terrible hand off and did not really make piece until Ike left office, and especially at the funeral of JFK.

JFK being young needed Eisenhower and Ike complied, offering advice and political cover after the Bay of Pigs.

LBJ embraced Truman and Eisenhower, Ike in fact at times was the bellicose voice in his ear over Vietnam.

For readers whose sense of history begins in the seventies Richard Nixon, as in all things, is as complex a character as one will find. While in office his thoughts to blackmail LBJ to keep him on the sidelines and out of public comment might have been the precursor to Watergate. The talk of breaking into The Brookings Institute is shown to have been to get some letters of Johnson's detailing his letters on the political nature of his bombing halt before the 1968 election. Of course we also see how Nixon's actions might well have met the level of treason as he interfered in the Paris peace talks during the 68 campaign.

Bill Clinton's relationships are perhaps the most affecting to one's spirit of what could be if politicians still worked together. Clinton took advice from the noted foreign policy expert Nixon and compared his death to the loss of his mother. Gerald Ford tried to help Clinton in his impeachment scandal, and while he could not keep the Republicans at bay Clinton never forgot his efforts. Of course the most interesting is Clinton's relationships with the Bush's. George Bush who has become his surrogate father and W who Clinton says one cannot help but like.

Clinton the consummate politician warned Gore and his fellow Democrats that underestimating Bush the second would be a mistake. Many have heard the joke W told about Clinton waking from one of his surgeries and being surrounded by his loved ones" Hillary, Chelsea, and my dad." He was not kidding. The relationship developed so far that when Bush the elder was honored at 87 at The Kennedy Center that Bill Clinton professed his belief that the elder " could do virtually no wrong in his eyes" and that he loved him. It is interesting to note that as the multitudes and generations of Bush's lined up for a family photo that Neil Bush shouted for Clinton " the brother from another mother" to join the picture. And he did. As Clinton said, "every family needs a black sheep."

This is just a small sampling of the book. It is an easy read and it is very interesting. For me the takeaway is simple. If Presidents when they leave the office hold the office above party and the country above party why can that not happen when they are in office and more importantly in Congress.

I have observed that politicians of both stripes start to seem more sensible after the campaign is over, after they no longer have to raise money and rouse the base. The question we have to ask ourselves is how do we get these sensible people to be the ones that are running. They " are " the ones running by the way in most cases, they just cannot be sensible and get elected.

We need to ask ourselves why.

Recount

There are some things that just get your blood pressure up when you remember them. An event a lifetime ago can make one feel like it just happened when it is remembered. Humans I think are programmed to remember loss and feelings of being treated unjustly much more than feelings of happiness and contentment. It stands to reason, for most of us days that we experience loss and what we perceive as unfair behavior are not everyday occurences. I guess we should consider that a person who remembers vividly a very happy experience might not have had as many of those to paint his memory banks with.

My point is that the election of the year 2000 is on of those events for me. I have a friend who to this day remembers a high school basketball game in which the timekeeper messed up preventing an important win against an arch rival. We all have these events.

I believe that in their heart of hearts most people who favored Bush know that were all the votes counted in Florida in 2000 that Bush would have lost. Now their are many arguments to mitigate this fact. They range from Gore probably stole other states, that's why we put the Justices in, to, after Gore became a caricature of himself, did you really want that guy to be President during 9/11.

I will not visit that history and ask pertinent questions like if Gore had been in office would there have even been a 9/11? They are inflammatory, cannot be argued with any certainty, and most positions are set in stone.


Still for me reading Jeffrey Toobin's excellent book on the 2000 Florida election and watching a movie like this HBO production are exercises in masochism. In short they drive me nuts and literally make me sick to my stomach.

In this wonderfully acted movie Kevin Spacey, a very underrated actor, plays Ron Klam a Democratic strategist who spearheads the Gore forces in Florida. Equally strong is Tom Wilkinson who plays James Baker. Playing Katherine Harris is Laura Dern in a performance that is honestly a bit over the top. I suppose it is possible that Harris was that ill prepared for the national spotlight and was likely led like a puppy dog by the Bush forces but her performance to me is a little unsettling, if this is an approximation of the truth it makes me feel worse to know it.


The movie moves crisply offering excellent dialogue and a full representation of the event a month after the election. In the end Rom Klam feels like he let the Vice President down by not winning but he was handicapped from the beginning. As the movie shows and Toobin's book cites the Democrats in choosing Warren Christopher as their original team leader in Florida brought in a man who was more in love with the process than the result. The Republicans led by Baker knew right away that this was a street fight and that people would only remember who won, not how they won. With this advantage the Republicans had all the advantages. With the state wired with Republicans it is amazing that the recount process got off the ground.


Many questions will never be answered. Who won? Both sides are confident they did, it does not really matter now. More important today is why did this happen. The purging of 20,000 people mostly black, fron the voter rolls, the foolish Butterfly ballot that had Pat Buchanan winning the Jewish vote in Palm Beach. The questions go on and on.


We will never know the whole truth but what we do know is history is written by the winners. Bush wrote the history. If it could or should have been a parallel history is something historians will be fighting about for the next hundred years.

This movie is an excellent telling of the events. If you will excuse me my blood is boiling, I need to go meditate.