WASHINGTON: Once, and not so long ago, running for political office was comparatively simple. Politicians assembled their teams, announced their candidacies and took to the campaign trail. Now, a presidential quest involves a Political Action Committee (PAC), a super PAC, a campaign army — and, of course, a book.

Oh, there has to be a book. If a candidate has already published one, perhaps it’s time for another. Books have become the telltale sign that someone in one office is serious about running for another.

Presidential announcement season, also known as 2015, marks the advent of an avalanche of political books, because nothing quite says “beach read” like learning about the early life or the recent policies of your favourite senator or governor. Instead of a chicken in every pot, a crowded field of candidates hopes for a book on every nightstand.

This year, a flock of politicians including, but not limited to, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul (and his wife, Kelley), Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Mike Lee, Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar have volumes designed to educate readers (and potential voters) about their childhood influences and their visions for a far better tomorrow.

It makes sense, from the politicians’ standpoint. “The media universe has become much more fractured than it used to be,” says presidential historian Michael Beschloss. To a candidate “who wants to reach a potentially significant audience in his or her exact words,” writing a book “may seem appealing.” Also, there’s severe me-tooism. Since “almost every presidential candidate these days writes a book,” Beschloss says, many may write “to keep up with their rivals”.

What’s less fathomable is why publishers continue to acquire and produce these titles, many of which are, let’s face it, as tedious as the campaign trail, lacking in fresh insights or candor, carefully designed not to offend along the path to victory. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd snarkily wrote of Hillary Clinton’s 2003 memoir, Living History, it was “neither living nor history”.

Yet the publishing and political worlds appear awash in the belief that every candidate must have a memoir, a political tract or both, despite the lack of any indication that the public is clamouring to buy them. Books by politicians continue to appear with stunning regularity and frightening alacrity, not so much written as belched.

“Everyone wants to publish a great book by a president or would-be president,” explains John Sterling, an editor at Macmillan who has worked on many political tomes. In addition to Elizabeth Warren’s A Fighting Chance, published in 2014, he also edited Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary (2010), Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance (January 1992, six months before Bill Clinton chose Gore as his running mate) and Klobuchar’s forthcoming memoir.

But the great books are few and far between. Personal Memoirs, by Ulysses S. Grant, is generally accepted as one. It was published by Mark Twain and didn’t appear until after Grant’s death in 1885. Books such as Dwight Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe (1948), John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage (1956) and Richard Nixon’s Six Crises (1962), all published before the authors were elected president, helped their future candidacies, Beschloss notes, because they were histories and unlike contemporary campaign books. Veteran editor Peter Osnos is partial to Tip O’Neill’s 1987 Man of the House, which he edited. Written with William Novak, long the best-selling co-author of choice, the memoir sold more than 400,000 copies.

The tome that’s the gateway drug of aspiring politician authors, though, is arguably Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, which first appeared when he was not yet an Illinois state senator. The memoir was republished in 2004 to critical and financial success after Obama delivered the Democratic National Convention keynote address. Dreams distinguished itself, publishing insiders agree, with its original story, its candor and a true writer’s voice. (Obama’s post-White House memoir is projected to sell for as much as $20 million, according to agent Andrew Wylie, and his wife’s for $12 million.)

“What applies to politicians applies to everyone doing a memoir,” says Simon & Schuster’s Priscilla Painton. “If it’s honest, if people recognise the voice is real, they’ll buy it.”

—By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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