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From the Author
Thanks and here's the Washington Post review:
I would like to thank the thousands of people who have already purchased "Show Time" and have e-mailed me at writeroger@aol.com. I also wanted to present the Washington Post review. Not a word has been changed: Copyright 1998 The WashingtonPost The Washington Post March 03, 1998, Tuesday, Final Edition HEADLINE: The '96 Campaign: Politics as Unusual BYLINE: David Nicholson BODY: SHOW TIME The American Political Circus and the Race for the White House By Roger Simon Times. 345 pp. $ 25 What a wonderful book this, deliciously wicked, a complete hoot from start to finish! Reading it, I committed the reviewer's cardinal sin -- I enjoyed myself so much, I forgot to take notes. Chicago Tribune journalist Roger Simon takes as his subject the 1996 presidential race, which one newspaper called the dullest campaign in the past 25 years. It may have seemed that way to some, but Simon found it "one of the greatest shows on Earth. " His book backs that claim. There are moments of drama and pathos aplenty, but what we mostly witness is buffoonery (and chicanery), enough to wonder at our collective national sanity and to pray for the future of the republic. No one in "Show Time " gets off unscathed. There's a devastating portrait of talk show host Larry King telling a joke so dirty it can't even be paraphrased for this family newspaper (it involves sex with a goat), then committing numerous gaffes in a broadcast with several Republican candidates, including reporting a Senate bill as passing by a 61 to 44 vote. CNN reporters laugh as they watch the broadcast but climb over each other to congratulate him afterward. Still, while the men and women of the media come in for their share of scrutiny, Simon pays most attention to the candidates and their staffs. The men and women of the Clinton campaign were devoted to "stagecraft, " controlling everything to present the candidate in the best light. When Clinton spoke, the stage was always four feet high so that people could wave signs without blocking television cameras. Pompoms for the audience were color-coded, orange in Arizona, green in Oregon. The debates with Bob Dole were 90 minutes instead of 60, to keep the 72-year-old Dole up past his usual bedtime. (As sleazy as that last sounds, it wasn't as bad as the 1992 debate, when they'd made sure the stools were so high Ross Perot's feet wouldn't meet the floor. And they'd made sure Clinton would always stand with George Bush or Perot in the background, which is how millions of viewers saw Bush looking at his watch as if he had something better to do after the debate was over.) Dole's advisers in 1996 also knew what it would take to win the election. Dole probably did, too, and he wanted no part of it. "I'm a real candidate, " he said. "I want to get things done. To me, that's a vision -- getting things done. " The trouble was he could never communicate just what he wanted to do. Asked to repeat the same message in five consecutive speeches, Dole was more likely to say the same thing five times in the same speech: "So I've done it the hard way. You do things the hard way, just as you have done things the hard way, and I've done it the hard way and I'll do it the hard way once again. " "Show Time " abounds with such rhetorical infelicities, and they are, sad to say, laugh-out-loud funny. Dole may be a genuinely good man, and he might have made a good president. Reading excerpts from his speeches, however, you wonder why he wanted to run. Aboard his campaign plane, Dole complained to a reporter that focus groups knew he was a senator and not much else. "What, " asked the reporter, "is the single most important thing for them to know about you? " Dole responded -- are you ready? -- "Beats me. " By contrast, Bill Clinton knew exactly what people wanted and how to give it to them. One of the most telling scenes in the book is of Clinton on a platform at the rear of the train taking him to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He's got a microphone, and there are speakers on the roof of the car. It's late. He can hardly see the people he's passing. Still the president continues to call out: "How you doin', man? Nice doggy. . . . That's the biggest satellite dish I ever saw! . . . Nice garden! " As silly as this sounds, it strikes to the heart of why Clinton won. He knew how to connect with the voters, how to appear "moderate, caring, and likable, especially to women. " In the end Simon quotes a Dole adviser to the effect that Clinton wasn't president before the 1996 campaign. "He never became president by governing, " he says. "He only became president by pretending to be president in the campaign. " The observation seems spot on. It's a sad ending to a very funny book. By David Nicholson, a Washington writer, who can be reached at nicholsdclark.net.
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- PublisherRandom House Value Publishing
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0517361515
- ISBN 13 9780517361511
- BindingHardcover
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