Michiko Kakutani: What books by presidential aspirants tell us
BARACK OBAMA wrote “very bad poetry” in college. John McCain once contemplated joining the French Foreign Legion. John Edwards wanted to become a lawyer so he could defend the likes of the wrongfully accused Dr. Richard Kimble on “The Fugitive.” Rudolph W. Giuliani found the boxing skills his father taught him useful as a young Yankee fan, growing up blocks from the Dodgers’ stadium in Brooklyn. Hillary Rodham Clinton was a Brownie, a Girl Scout and a Paul McCartney girl, and wanted to grow up to be a teacher or nuclear physicist.
These are the sorts of personal tidbits a reader can find in books by these presidential candidates, along with lots of policy recommendations, boasts, platitudes, spin, the occasional mea culpa and yards and yards of self-promotion. Most books by politicians are, at bottom, acts of salesmanship: efforts to persuade, beguile or impress the reader, efforts to rationalize past misdeeds and inoculate the author against future accusations. And yet beneath the sales pitch are clues — in the author’s voice, use of language, stylistic tics and self-presentation — that provide some genuine glimpses of the personalities behind the public personas. In short, when candidates decide to publish, they can still run, but they can’t hide — at least not entirely.
At the same time these candidates’ books remind us that the ability to construct a powerful narrative is an essential skill for a politician, for it confers the ability to articulate a coherent vision of the world, to make sense of history and to define the author — before he or she is defined by opponents and the news media. All the leading candidates in the 2008 race for president have published (often with the help of a professional writer or editor) at least one book, and most of the would-be candidates waiting in the wings — from Al Gore to Fred Thompson to Newt Gingrich — are published authors as well....
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These are the sorts of personal tidbits a reader can find in books by these presidential candidates, along with lots of policy recommendations, boasts, platitudes, spin, the occasional mea culpa and yards and yards of self-promotion. Most books by politicians are, at bottom, acts of salesmanship: efforts to persuade, beguile or impress the reader, efforts to rationalize past misdeeds and inoculate the author against future accusations. And yet beneath the sales pitch are clues — in the author’s voice, use of language, stylistic tics and self-presentation — that provide some genuine glimpses of the personalities behind the public personas. In short, when candidates decide to publish, they can still run, but they can’t hide — at least not entirely.
At the same time these candidates’ books remind us that the ability to construct a powerful narrative is an essential skill for a politician, for it confers the ability to articulate a coherent vision of the world, to make sense of history and to define the author — before he or she is defined by opponents and the news media. All the leading candidates in the 2008 race for president have published (often with the help of a professional writer or editor) at least one book, and most of the would-be candidates waiting in the wings — from Al Gore to Fred Thompson to Newt Gingrich — are published authors as well....