In doing so, Sidney Blumenthal, Paul Taylor and Roger Simon slog some heavily traveled ground. Once again we have Bush’s passage from political wimp he-man, the selection of Dan Quayle, the baffling cool of Michael Dukakis, the tantalizing promise of Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson’s soaring moment after the Michigan primary. Fortunately, each book has something more–a sense of eloquent grievance that goes beyond mere recitation of by-now familar backstage dramas.
Most withering is Blumenthal, a senior editor for The New Republic, who argues in Pledging Allegiance (386pages. HarperCollins. $22.95) that Bush and Dukakis bungled a historic moment: the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the thawing of East-West tensions. While Ronald Reagan warmed to the once-evil empire, his would-be successors were clinging to the icons of containment displayed on the book’s cover–photographs of Bush touring a flag factory and Dukakis riding in a tank. Blumenthal, a longtime chronicler and critic of the conservative movement, deftly traces each man’s road to obliviousness. Dukakis (“the candidate for the age of safe sex-stable and steady, no peaks or valleys”) disdained the messy passions of ideology for the rationalism promoted by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Bush, Reagan’s dutiful political son, used another role model for his candidacy–Richard Nixon. Blumenthal asserts that this granddaddy of 1950s anti-communism and negative campaigning was the philosophical lodestar of the low-road GOP campaign. Bush’s retrogade success in 1988 spawns a larger failure in Blumenthal’s estimation a political society “stricken with aphasia,” incapable of speaking to post-cold war realities.
Taylor, a political reporter for The Washington Post, asks how we can avoid another national election “devoid of adventure, mission, vitality or ideas.” He won a footnote in campaign history by asking Gary Hart if he had ever committed adultery, igniting a furious debate about the boundaries of press scrutiny. See How They Run (305 pages. Knopf: $22.96) works best as the confessional of a working reporter facing the consequences of asking the question no one else wanted to ask. He endured a tide of criticism for his query, some from his Post colleagues. Taylor gives as good as he gets, describing the press corps as having the attitude of a bloated elite, bingeing on gaffes but backing away from stories like Bush’s role in the Iran-contra scandal. While this issue begs tougher analysis, Taylor is content to write off press failures to competitive pressures and pack journalism. More useful are his ideas to blunt the pernicious influence of attack ads and news sound bites. One would give five minutes of free television time on alternating nights to candidates–unfiltered by surrogates or negative spots.
Roger Simon wanders the corridors of 1988 opening whatever doors happen to appeal. The result, Road Show (356 pages. Farrar Straus Giroux. $19.95), is a pleasantly quirky tour: a profile of the TV director who staged the first Republican candidates’ debate, a woman’s description of her brief affair with Gary Hart and an account of NEWSWEEK’S behind-the-scenes attempts to patch up relations with George Bush after using the cover line “Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor’.” Simon, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, is good at detailing wretched press excess (11 TV crews set up to watch Pete du Pont play miniature golf in Iowa). Like Blumenthal and Taylor, he’s not sanguine about the prospects for a better 1992. As things stand, the next road show is likely to be a dreary rerun.
