If you think the 2000 presidential election was brutally fought, just wait until you get a load of the battle between the books chronicling it.
“At last count, I think there were about 731 coming out,” joked David Kaplan, a Newsweek editor who is hard at work on his own book about the closest presidential election in American history.
His jest is understandable. Five campaign books have been published thus far, with a slew of others poised to join them; and those first five arrived in bookstores so quickly – barely two months after George W. Bush’s inauguration – that the 2000 election appears to have spawned a new genre: the political insta-book.
There have been insta-books about notorious crimes, of course, and insta-books about celebrities. But national political campaigns typically inspire rumination and reflection, requiring at least a few months of thinking and writing.
Not this year. The combination of a white-knuckle election cliffhanger and the red-hot speed of the contemporary publishing world has resulted in the production of campaign books in what many observers believe may be record time. And there are at least six more major books on tap.
“Publishers want these books now,” said Roger Simon, chief political correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, whose campaign book will be published May 15. “The election was just over, and they say, ‘Why can’t we have it?’
“Publishers have treated this last election almost like O.J.,” he said, referring to O.J. Simpson’s widely publicized double murder trial. A slew of books about that case flooded the market, several making the best-seller list.
Some people may wonder, however, if the books about the 2000 campaign constitute a case of too much, too soon. Can writers really offer profound perspectives about an event that concluded only a few months ago? Doesn’t history require a bit more distance? Will readers believe that these hurried efforts offer all they need to know about a complex and important election?
Two of the books, “36 Days” and “Deadlock,” include election stories previously published by the Washington Post and New York Times, along with new material. A third, “Bush v. Gore,” is a compendium of previously published columns on the Florida recount controversy. But even when the material has appeared before, the decision to release it in book form – and the decision about which works to include – means editors made judgments and reached conclusions about the 2000 election in mere weeks. In previous times, those decisions would likely have taken months, if not years.
Jake Tapper, whose campaign book is due out next month, says he is exhausted from working around the clock to get the manuscript to his publishers. “Will I ever write a book on a deadline like this again? I can’t imagine it — unless I get 10 times the money.”
Tapper, a political writer for online magazine Salon, where excerpts from his book “Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency” recently appeared, acknowledged such conditions aren’t ideal for writers who want to produce meaningful work.
“The perfect thing would be to go into a time warp and spend two years writing this and then publish it when I’m publishing it — now.”
A skeptic wades in
Richard Ben Cramer, who toiled for six years both before and after the 1988 election on his book about that presidential joust (“What It Takes: The Way to the White House”), is skeptical about campaign books written on the fly.
“When publishers impose that kind of deadline, they get a certain kind of book. You’re going to get a quickie,” said Cramer, who has no plans to write about the 2000 race. “Publishers in general try to substitute timeliness for merit. But time is the reporter’s best friend.”
He has not read any of the new campaign books, said Cramer, who spent five years researching and writing his latest book, “Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life.” But he has his doubts about the virtues of speed when it comes to complicated topics: “What’s the point of doing a book if you don’t know what you’re talking about?”
Yet William Kristol, editor of the public affairs magazine The Weekly Standard and co-editor of “Bush v. Gore,” said the rush won’t hurt history. “There’s a lot to talk about and argue about” in the 2000 election.
The patron saint of campaign books is the late Theodore H. White, who is credited with introducing a new formof political journalism with books such as “The Making of the President 1960.” That richly detailed, beautifully written book won the Pulitzer Prize, and was followed by books about the 1964, ’68 and ’72 presidential contests.
Ironically, though, White would probably not recognize current campaign books as part of the same genre that he pioneered. His work was the antithesis of an insta-book: His descriptions read like history, not bullet items.
Larry Sabato has seen both sides of the coin. In 1996, he and several colleagues turned out a book on that year’s presidential election — “Toward the Millennium: The Election of 1996” — in two months.
“It was the earliest election book ever published up to that time, and it was just a bear. It just destroyed umpteen people’s lives,” recalled Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Governmental Studies and frequent guest on public affairs TV shows.
“We worked over Thanksgiving. The first deadline was Dec. 2, the revision deadline was Christmas Eve. And it was out by the first week in January,” Sabato said. “It’s tough to have any perspective” so quickly after an event, he added.
But for his book on the 2000 election, “The Perfect Storm: The Election of 2000,” he’s taking his time, Sabato said. It won’t be published until next fall.
“I’ve changed my mind about the theme of this election several times. You have to have a chance to think.”
An electrifying election
The seeming deluge of insta-books on the 2000 race is a result, Sabato said, of “the most electrifying election we’ve ever had” and the world’s revved-up pace: “We used to be interested in the previous presidential election for three years afterward. Now, it’s pretty much down to half a year, and I’m being generous.
“It’s frustrating,” Sabato added. “I think the public is missing the richness of political history by focusing on the instant political analysis.”
In the end, though, distance and perspective don’t always result in truth, as Simon pointed out. “You can do a history book 100 years after the fact and still get it wrong.”
Simon also echoed a point made by Sabato and others: What campaign insta-books lose in thoroughness and perspective, they may gain in the freshness of the participants’ memories.
“The passage of time doesn’t always bring things into clearer focus,” Simon said. “Interviews done immediately after the fact are the best.”
Mickey Kaus, political columnist for Salon, was blunter: “You have to get to people before they start changing their stories.”
