If there’s one thing we know about politicians, it’s that they really don’t spend a lot of time reading books, or at least serious books (Ronald Reagan was very fond of a historical potboiler called Lion of Ireland, while Bill Clinton favors the pompous and portentous child-abuse detective novels of Jonathan Kellerman). But serious works of non-fiction? Please. That very fact has led interviewers to try to humiliate candidates by asking them what books they’ve liked. The Dole campaign was so concerned about this, they prepared the candidate for just such a question by drilling into him the name of a book whose last chapter he had read in xeroxed form. Dole wasn’t asked, so he volunteered: “I’ve just finished reading a book. I think it’s called . . . What is it? The Demise of the Democratic Party by Ronald Kardosh or something, talking about all the liberal influences in the administration.”
Usually one remembers the title of a book one has read, given the fact that it often takes several days to finish it. By punting the answer, Dole gave the lie to the idea that he had read it. He was referring to Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996, by the historian Ronald Radosh.
This reminds us of some other bookish instances in presidential-debate history. In 1984, Walter Mondale scolded President Reagan for his failure to advance arms control with the Soviet Union. Evidence for this dereliction, he said, was to be found in Strobe Talbott’s “classic book Deadly Gambits” (which “classic” had been out for only a couple of months).
George Bush was asked about heroes in 1988, and after a moment’s hesitation he hit a home run by digging up the name of Armando Valladares, “who was released from a Cuban jail, came out, and told the truth in this brilliant book Against All Hope about what is actually happening in Cuba.”
That same year, Dan Quayle, naturally, was required to give multiple book reviews. What books have you read in the last six months that have had a ” particularly strong effect on you?” he was asked, “and tell us why.” Quayle listed Richard Nixon’s 1999, a collection by his fellow Senate Hoosier Richard Lugar titled Letters to the Next President, and “Bob” (that’s Robert K. to you) Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra, all of which he described in detail abnormal for these debates.
Four years later, Quayle made hay out of Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance, and Clinton, for his part, offered that “my wife, Hillary, gave me a book about a year ago in which the author defined insanity as just doing the same old thing over and over.” And what book was that, Mr. President? Was it perhaps read as well by that staffer of yours who grew up in a trailer park and took umbrage at Dole’s convention address? And what is the exact name of that staffer, please?
