Inoffensively Clichéd and Calculated
Hillary Speaks! (Not Really)
By MARK LEIBOVICH, NYT
MAY 20, 2014
Next month, Hillary Clinton’s latest memoir, “Hard Choices,” a chronicle of her time at the State Department, will enter the expanding political subgenre of Inoffensively Clichéd and Calculated Titles Composed of Inoffensive Clichés and Calculations. “Hard Choices,” which reportedly earned Clinton a high-seven-figure advance, will offer the standard promotional- book-tour-cum-possible-campaign prelude. It is “much awaited” in the same way that Vice President Selina Meyer’s “Some New Beginnings” and Senator Al Franken’s “Why Not Me?” were. Of course, one was a fictional spoof on HBO’s “Veep” and the other was real-life satire, but both occupy the broad canon of politician tomes that flicker through our news cycles before settling into our remainder bins.
America’s leaders, not to mention its aspiring ones, have been writing books for centuries — well before Michele Bachmann was sharing her “Core of Conviction” and John Kerry and John Edwards were unleashing “Our Plan for America.” (America, of course, had other plans.) Some of the stuff was even pretty good. Jefferson, Madison and Washington were all accomplished writers before they were presidents; Ulysses S. Grant wrote what is widely considered the best presidential memoir; the mass-market success of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” (albeit with an assist from Ted Sorensen) served as a precursor to his successful 1960 campaign.
Recent decades, however, have produced less august work as a rash of quixotic public servants have eagerly inflicted their “visions” on the reading public. (Even if Dennis Kucinich never had a prayer of becoming president, he was still obliged to get “A Prayer for America” published.) As old-media staples of a politician’s “brand,” and logical extensions of their retailing efforts, these magnum opuses are often little more than elongated talking points bound between hard covers — formulaic, overcautious and jam-packaged with bumper-sticker phrases, usually featuring a Photoshopped rendering of our author-hero overlaid on a flag-filled cover. That’s how we got from “Profiles in Courage” to “This is Herman Cain!”
(More here.)
By MARK LEIBOVICH, NYT
MAY 20, 2014
Next month, Hillary Clinton’s latest memoir, “Hard Choices,” a chronicle of her time at the State Department, will enter the expanding political subgenre of Inoffensively Clichéd and Calculated Titles Composed of Inoffensive Clichés and Calculations. “Hard Choices,” which reportedly earned Clinton a high-seven-figure advance, will offer the standard promotional- book-tour-cum-possible-campaign prelude. It is “much awaited” in the same way that Vice President Selina Meyer’s “Some New Beginnings” and Senator Al Franken’s “Why Not Me?” were. Of course, one was a fictional spoof on HBO’s “Veep” and the other was real-life satire, but both occupy the broad canon of politician tomes that flicker through our news cycles before settling into our remainder bins.
America’s leaders, not to mention its aspiring ones, have been writing books for centuries — well before Michele Bachmann was sharing her “Core of Conviction” and John Kerry and John Edwards were unleashing “Our Plan for America.” (America, of course, had other plans.) Some of the stuff was even pretty good. Jefferson, Madison and Washington were all accomplished writers before they were presidents; Ulysses S. Grant wrote what is widely considered the best presidential memoir; the mass-market success of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” (albeit with an assist from Ted Sorensen) served as a precursor to his successful 1960 campaign.
Recent decades, however, have produced less august work as a rash of quixotic public servants have eagerly inflicted their “visions” on the reading public. (Even if Dennis Kucinich never had a prayer of becoming president, he was still obliged to get “A Prayer for America” published.) As old-media staples of a politician’s “brand,” and logical extensions of their retailing efforts, these magnum opuses are often little more than elongated talking points bound between hard covers — formulaic, overcautious and jam-packaged with bumper-sticker phrases, usually featuring a Photoshopped rendering of our author-hero overlaid on a flag-filled cover. That’s how we got from “Profiles in Courage” to “This is Herman Cain!”
(More here.)
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