Democracy's feast Book

"This is about as good as it gets, as close as American politics offers to a mortal lock. On this night, October 8, 1986, the Vice President is coming to the Astrodome, to Game One of the National League Championship Series, and the nation will be watching from its La-Z-Boys as George Bush stands front and center, glistening with America's holy water: play-off juice. Oh, and here's the beauty part: he doesn't have to say a thing! He's just got to throw out the first ball. He'll be hosted by the Astros owner...he'll be honored by the National League and the Great Old Game; he'll be cheered by 44,131 fans - and not even a risky crowd, the kind that might get testy because oil isn't worth a damn...No, those guys can't get tickets tonight. This is a play-off crowd, a corporate-perks crowd, the kind of fellows who were transferred in a few years ago from Stamford-Conn., you know, for that new marketing thing (and were, frankly, delighted by the price of housing), a solid GOP crowd, tax-conscious, white and polite - they're wearing sports coats, and golf shirts with emblems - vice presidents all..."
- Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes: The Way to the White House

So begins one of the classic works of American politics. A huge, giddy, breathless ride that leaves you exhausted.

Just like politics leaves you exhausted.

There is no better time to read Richard Ben Cramer’s What it Takes. For years, now, we've been locked in the midst of one of the longest, most deplorable political cycles in American history. Like no time since the height of the Vietnam War, domestic politics has become a blood feud, tearing apart friends and families and co-workers. Politics has infused every aspect of our lives, even our sporting events. It is hard to watch; it is hard to escape.

Thus, you are probably asking yourself: Why would I want to read about more politics?

But here's the thing: What it Takes is an excellent way to get your political fix without having to pay attention to what’s currently unfolding before your eyes. It takes you back to the 1988 presidential campaign, and even though it wasn’t necessarily clean – Lee Atwater was involved, after all – at least none of the candidates felt the need to talk about the length of their penis. (Bob Dole’s Viagra commercials would eventually force us, implicitly, to think about his penis. However, in 1988, that was still in the future).

What it Takes is unlike most books I’ve ever read. The closest comparison, both in size and authorial audacity, might be Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. (Insert your own joke about whether it’s more pleasant to read about a convicted killer or political aspirants). Cramer, a fantastic journalist who died in 2013, announces at the outset his intention get into the heads of the men who want to be President of the United States. To know “what kind of life would lead a man…to think he ought to be President.”

Cramer accomplishes this feat by delivering a dazzling, dizzying, intensely detailed 6-person biography. He digs deep into the cores of Republicans George H.W. Bush and Robert Dole, and Democrats Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Joe Biden, and Gary Hart. This is a rare book that manages to achieve an intimacy with its subjects. It’s hard enough to penetrate the psyche of an ordinary person, much less a politician who is trying to present himself as fit to lead the free world. What Cramer accomplishes is almost breathtaking. You go inside the heads of these guys. You gain a psychological understanding of what made them who they are. Most biographies are content to tell you what happened, and when. This is the rare work that tells you what happened, when, and most importantly, why that matters at all.

Like all masterpieces, What it Takes presents certain challenges. The first and most obvious is size. As in 1,051 pages of text. (There are no endnotes or source notes whatsoever. This is troubling, of course, but perhaps necessary to keep the book from being the size of a human infant clutching a full-grown Chihuahua). That’s a lot of pages. Moreover, I must add – at the risk of sounding a million years old – that the font is really, really small. Fortunately, What it Takes is broken down into 130 chapters and an epilogue, meaning that most chapters are fairly short.

Cramer writes with a kinetic energy that he manages to maintain throughout his book’s prodigious length. (I don’t know how he did it. Even reading, I had to stop to take a breath). The detail is of the impossible, person-in-the-room variety. There are long portions of quoted dialogue. There are internal monologues. There is stream-of-consciousness. There are a lot of ellipses. There are – of course! – a trove of exclamation points. Cramer even goes to lengths to capture the actual speech patterns of the candidates. At first, this seems ridiculous. Eventually, like everything else, it works by serving to heighten the feeling that you know these people. That you’re with them.

Cramer captures their lives in moments big and small. Bush getting shot down during World War II off the island of Chichi Jima. Dole suffering serious wounds while serving in Italy. Biden leading the Senate revolt against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Hart leaving his campaign after his womanizing comes to light. Cramer gives you the exhausting day-to-day of life on the campaign trail. No viewpoint goes neglected. He even provides an entire page through the eyes of a motorcycle cop in Bush’s motorcade.

As it was, they spent half their lives waiting; it was dreariest when the schedule got busted and H-hour came and went and nobody even knew anymore what was supposed to happen. But with George Bush, they could fire up their gleaming Harleys at H-hour minus five, and he'd be there, with his crew in the cars, right on the hour. Then came the part that was their specialty, as they roared away from Ellington Field, southeast of town, and onto the open concrete of I-45, where seven or eight of their buddies had already closed the first few ramps and held back traffic on the northbound side. Not a car, not one truck in the way! And another half-dozen men in jodhpurs would peel away from the motorcade, and throw their hogs wide open - sixty, seventy, eighty miles per hour! - roaring up to the next ramps to close them until the motorcade sailed by. And after the trailing Harleys passed, they'd open those ramps again and thunder on past the motorcade with the wind keening off their farings and flattening their smiles inside their helmets - ninety, a hundred, if they could - past the motorcade again to block off the ramps and road ahead...That limo was never gonna need a brake job. Never had to stop - not while these boys were around.

None of this is delivered chronologically, meaning you have to pay attention. There are six different timelines to keep track of. For example, Cramer starts his book with Bush in the present-day (1988) timeline. Then he jumps all the way back to World War II to cover Bush’s time as a naval aviator. He uses this same technique for every candidate. Sometimes, the chapter title will give you the dateline. At other times, though, Cramer just thrusts you into the middle of a scene. It can be a bit vexing, until you realize that the chronology isn’t as important as the effect Cramer has achieved. These lives are a puzzle that is only gradually solved.

Politics today are, in a word, dehumanizing. Cramer’s greatest attribute is his humanness. His empathy for every single person he covers. Their triumphs and tragedies. And there are a lot of tragedies marking these men. The death of three year-old Robin Bush of leukemia. The death of Joe Biden’s wife and one year-old child in a car accident. The substance abuse struggles of Kitty Dukakis. All these instances give resonance to the paths taken by each of the candidates. If Cramer has a favorite, I’d venture it’s Dole, whose painful war-wound recovery Cramer follows in excruciating detail. But he gives every man their due – and lets you see the world from their perspectives. (I feel like this kind of humanizing has an extraordinary power. I wonder, for instance, if Bush knew that Gephardt’s young son had cancer. And if that knowledge might have bridged politics).

Refreshingly, Cramer is not out to "get" anyone. If he has a target, it is the ratings-obsessed media covering the candidates. He is clearly irritated at the sordid, pre-Clinton take-down of Gary Hart by journalists who hounded his family and paramour Donna Rice. Cramer never lectures, though. Indeed, What it Takes serves as a compelling rebuke to facile, sensationalist reporting without saying anything at all.

One downside to Cramer’s intense, personal approach is that you lose any sight of the broader context. If you – for some reason – really just want to know the nuts and bolts of the 1988 Presidential campaign, What it Takes will certainly disappoint you. It entirely ignores candidates other than his chosen six. Even after 1,000 plus pages I didn't know who all participated in the race. There are only passing references, for instance, to Jesse Jackson’s surprise run in the Democratic primaries. (Hint: If you read this, the Paul Simon that Cramer refers to is the Democratic Senator from Illinois known for his affected bowtie. It turns out that the famous singer did not make a bid for U.S. President). It should also be noted that Cramer does not get to the Iowa caucuses until roughly 800 pages into his story. The actual general election is not even covered. This might have pissed me off, but it makes a certain kind of sense. What happened is not interesting to Cramer. Anyone can find out what happened. He is, to the end, concerned with the candidates themselves.

Today’s political titles – like Game Change – traffic heavily in gossip, backstabbing, and score-settling. Don’t get me wrong. It’s entertaining as hell to read. But it’s also so fleeting and transitory that you don’t remember a thing. There is no deeper purpose; they seek no meaning. Those kinds of books are written in sidewalk chalk. What it Takes is a monument chiseled in stone. A monument not solely to the candidates, but to the art of writing itself.