Bragging writes: how presidential candidates try to impress reporters with their reading lists

Washington Monthly, April, 2003 by Brent Kendall

Kerrey holds no grudge against the press for engaging in such psychoanalysis. In fact, he says, there was some truth to it. His advice to the current candidates? Be authentic, but be prepared. "If you don't want to think about your answer ahead of time ... don't run for president. Because it's part of what you have to do," Kerrey told me. "No candidate is going to be successful by being themselves."

But at least he tried. In 2000, Bill Bradley staunchly refused to answer the book question, insisting it was irrelevant to his fitness for office. But even this non-answer proved revealing. It showed that Bradley considered himself above having to play the game. Which in turn reinforced the notion that he was aloof, a criticism that stuck and came to characterize the Bradley campaign, much as Dukakis's dullness had characterized his. In the end, even Bradley himself seemed to recognize this. When he withdrew from the race, he began his announcement speech by joking, "I want to begin this morning with a discussion of my favorite books."

But there is no better example of how books provide an insight into a candidate's persona than Bill Clinton. A legendary campaigner, Clinton famously had something to please everyone--including a different book for every constituency. (Not only did he feel your pain, he read your books.) As a voracious reader, he talked about books with gusto. If you asked him straight, he'd tell you his favorite was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. For ivory-tower types, the answer switched to Lord Blake's Disraeli, a biography of the colorful 19th-century British prime minister. For the Oprah crowd? Clinton was a big fan of bestselling page-turners like Tony Hillerman and Sara Paretsky--Sue Grafton, too. In his unique way, Clinton's exuberance about books was genuine, something that voters picked up on. Indeed, the now ex-president continues to share his reading choices--he's even considering starting a book club through his not-yet-built presidential library.

The 2000 election demonstrated precisely how candidates' book choices play right into the media's preconceived storylines--for better and for worse. The vice president announced his book selection on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Stendhal's The Red and the Black. His choice of the French classic drew praise in some quarters. "It was heartening to hear the invocation of a serious book and a serious writer roll off the tongue of a presidential candidate. Even if Gore is posturing, he is posturing in the right direction," The New Republic pronounced. Unfortunately for Gore, The Red and the Black provided a convenient plotline for his detractors. Stendhal's protagonist Julien Sorel may be one of the great characters of 19th-century literature, but he was also an opportunist whose actions were calculated to advance his career. Reporters seized on Sorel's inauthenticity as an analogy for Gore's. When Gore decided not to pursue the 2004 nomination, National Review extended the analogy even further, writing that his fancy for "Stendhal's novel of a career chosen against inclination" was evidence that he "felt that politics was a burden."