Richard Ben Cramer died this week, author of the magisterial What It Takes, about the 1988 US Presidential campaign. It’s a must-read book for anyone fascinated by American politics: over a thousand small-print pages about the Primaries and then the Presidential campaign itself.
I devoured it about three years ago, and even at a great pace it took me nearly a month of reading into the early hours of each morning.
It’s not really about an ephemeral moment in US politics; it’s about character – what makes people tick, what forces influence them, what strange combination of personality, circumstance, chance, choice and fate conspires to guide some people through to the very end. It’s really six heavyweight political biographies woven together into an epic drama. If you have enjoyed even a single episode of The West Wing, you will love this.
Joe Klein pays tribute to Cramer and to his masterpiece:
Beautifully written, precisely observed–and with a larger point that beggared the cheap cynicism that had become, and remains, the default position for so many political journalists. Cramer actually dared to appreciate the incredible intelligence, hard work, courage and, yes, character that went into running for President. At a time when most of his colleagues were calling the Democratic candidates for president “the seven dwarfs,” he found a blissfully compelling Irish champion in Joe Biden and reported the anguish of the impassive midwesterner, Dick Gephardt, as the Congressman and his wife struggled with their son’s cancer.
But it was on the Republican side that Cramer found his two classic heroes–George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. Both of them combat-scarred veterans of World War II, both dedicated to service, both easy to weep, both open to making political judgments that might harm their careers. Cramer’s account of Dole’s remarkable recovery from a grievous wound and the post-traumatic stress that accompanied it was the heart of the book. (I’ll never forget one precious detail: As he struggled to rebuild muscle strength, Dole listened to “You’ll Never Walk Alone” over and over again.)
Cramer defiantly became friendly with his subjects, especially Biden, Bush and Dole. That may have been a bridge too far for those of who of us don’t dive in, as Richard did, and then leave the political scene. It’s hard to criticize politicians who are also friends (as Daniel Patrick Moynihan became for me). But Cramer’s appreciation of these politicians’ skill and humanity became an example I tried to follow in subsequent campaigns, a crucial antidote to the wall-to-wall ugly that corrodes the political process. (Thus, in 2012, it was important for me to write about the incredible strength of Rick Santorum’s family, even if I disagreed with him on almost everything.)
Cramer’s clear-eyed fairness is a quality badly needed now. A new generation of journalists, without the time or budgets to get to know the people who would lead us–and a new generation of politicians, burned by the gotcha TV reporting and tweeting of the moment (and over-protected by their handlers)–have taken the juice and joy, and a larger accuracy, out of political journalism. There are exceptions. But if you don’t know Mitt Romney, and all he’s willing to say in public is pablum and baloney, it is extremely easy to assume the worst. The hardest story for any young political journalist to write is a positive one about a politician.
Bridges and Tangents 
I think the American political system and the characters who are a part of it is one of the most difficult things for us Brits to understand. This book sounds well worth a read!
‘what forces influence them, what strange combination of personality, circumstance, chance, choice and fate conspires to guide some people through to the very end’. These things do not conspire . . . (well maybe choice a little)
People conspire and when they do it usually falls short of God and Love.
On a lighter note, this post made mer recall a cartoon by Giles in the Daily Express from the 1970’s. In it an American tourist is sitting in a London black cab. The caption went something like “Ok, here’s the deal, the rules of Cricket for the American Constitution.
My husband was given the 7 series box set of The West Wing for Christmas 2006. We didn’t start watching it until 2011 but then we were so hooked we watched the lot over about 6 months. If the book is anything like it I’m sure it will be great.
I have been fascinated by the above quote. . . and I keep coming back to it, especially in relation to your prophecy blog, and the one on fear. My last comment sounds a little bit harsh. It wasn’t meant to, but referring back to your earlier post on the prophets, without absolute Truth we would not have prophets, it just isn’t a possibility.
And then the valid fear we feel (in your last post) is a fear in itself not to be feared, because one should not be fearful of the Truth however frightening. . . but one should rightly be fearful of untruth. When people conspire, they act upon their own perceptions with the people they choose to conspire with, they conspire with only people they trust, this often is not the whole truth and is bias. Thats why to be absolutely truthful at all times is imperative, to conspire is a pretence in which to achieve a particular outcome regardless of the pure truth. God is Love and spirit and is to be worshipped in spirit and Truth. If we are all absolutely honest in God, conspiracy wouldn’t even exist.
Father “if you like that, you’ll like this”. Nixonland by Rick Perlstein is the best account I have ever read of how the post Kennedy American political settlement has come about.