The Elephant and Donkey Show

Pages: 448

Rs 599

Race of a Lifetime claims to be a vivid and novelistic portrait of the US presidential elections. It starts off with the candidates deciding to run,then the long and agonising Primary Election calendar and finishes off with the General Election. It is written by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin,two journalists with strong credentials and an endless number of sources on the inside. It covers many details of the election campaigns of the different candidates,although most of the focus is on Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton and John McCain and their respective staff.

The book is replete with details that may or may not interest the average reader. If you want to know what Sarah Palin ate in the immediate aftermath of negative press coverage,how many times McCain used the f expletive on his cell phone on a given day,why Michelle Obama was angry with Hillary,what absurd thoughts may or possibly may not have gone through John Edwards mind when the press was trying to dig up stuff regarding his peccadilloes,why Bill Clinton was alternating between dislike of Obama and cordiality toward McCain,this is the book for you. The authors clarify in the beginning that most of the gossip this book is either comprehensively gossipy or it is nothing was picked up from persons promising them the anonymity of deep background,an expression that allows for making events and words sound plausible while not passing any test of veracity. The authors also explain in painstaking detail the tests they have imposed on themselves when placing conversations of the actors within quotation marks,outside quotation marks or in italics. All of this,I suppose,is meant to get the reader excited about being allowed entry into chaotic campaign offices in the guise of the proverbial fly on the wall.

The book does not disappoint as a full-fledged gossip tome. You get to see the great political figures of contemporary America as emperors and empresses without clothes,you get the opportunity prodded by the authors to wonder what they were thinking during a plane ride on some clearly very crucial day! You get a feel for the kind of people the leaders surround themselves with: incompetent loyalists,brilliant spin-doctors,completely non-ideological marketers,amateur psychbabblers and perennial leakers to the media in general and to the authors in particular.

The book makes no attempt to place the events of the election in any historical context; it has very little analysis of the ideologies adopted by the candidates or the implications of their positions from any perspective of public policy. But I guess this would constitute unfair criticism. They never meant to write about these things,however important these may be. If you are a student of US political history,you can safely skip this book. If you are a fan of Agatha Christies Miss Marple,then this is for you. Miss Marple believed that human nature was the same everywhere and she saw parallels between the village butcher and a famous scientist. This hypothesis is shared by Heileman and Halperin. Reading their book,I was amused to notice how much Obama,Clinton,Edwards,McCain,Palin and Joe Biden resemble different bosses and colleagues I have worked with. It might be a useful book for young Americans who plan to join the campaign staff of future candidates. If nothing else,it might teach them how to leverage their positions as future deep background sources. But if you are interested in your gossip coming to you in stately prose,stick with Christie. Heileman and Halperin seem to be writing a script for a bad Hollywood movie that is quite likely to be successful. Their staccato style and make-believe high drama should be proscribed for undergraduates,let alone others.

And yet,did I enjoy it? It wasnt unputdownable,but I did enjoy it. It made me feel good to know that these larger-than-life public figures were infantile idiots most of the time,it amused me to note that they used the f word quite unnecessarily all the time and,of course,the open invitations into the salacious conference rooms was quite titillating in other words,the effect was more or less what the deep background sources wanted to convey and the authors wanted to achieve. The lack of a high-quality prose style turned out to be a plus. Reading the book required very little effort. In fact,it is ideal for the mentally lazy.

In other respects too,the book is clever. The authors are quite harsh with Clinton and McCain and very harsh with Edwards. They are in awe of Obama. It does not make sense to offend the staff of the incumbent president. After all,one may need more deep background stories from them in the pursuit of ongoing journalistic activities. They are also soft on Palin in a roundabout way one could argue that this is because Palin may yet be a force in the future. It is not necessary to believe that the authors have done this consciously. This is just the nature of the gossip trade. Even old village women proverbially accused of being gossips instinctively know who to gossip about and when. Heileman and Halperin are worthy inheritors of a legitimate intellectual tradition.

Should you buy the book? Not really. Try and borrow it. But if you do buy it,you can have some enjoyable lazy reading and pass it on to a friend who loves gossip. Theres no need to keep it in the library you plan to bequeath to posterity.