Amid the clatter of the presidential caucuses and primaries, some excellent political books have been coming in over the transom. Here’s my report on one of them: others to follow as time permits.
Kathryn McGarr’s The Whole Damn Deal: Robert Strauss and the Art of Politics. This is a biography of Robert Strauss, born in Jones County, Texas and a successful but little-known Dallas lawyer until he entered national politics as Democratic National Chairman in 1973. Strauss’s election was seen as a rebuke of George McGovern and the antiwar Democrats who had supported him for the party’s nomination in 1972, but he took care to include them as well as just about everyone else he could. “I remain committed,” he said in his first speech to the full Democratic National Committee, “to the proposition that our conservatives are not bigots, our business community is not evil, our liberals are not foolish and that our Democratic party is not leaderless or without purpose.”
