John Dean Lauds ‘Playing President’

Posted on Jul 29, 2006

In a thoughtful review, the former presidential counselor and bestselling author writes about Robert Scheer’s new book: “If anyone has more succinctly stated and summarized the folly we call presidential campaigns, I am not aware of it—and I read widely about the subject.”

Purchase Robert Scheer’s New Book Playing President My Relationships with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton—and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush

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John Dean at FindLaw:

I read a couple of books a week, and this is the best summer read I have found. ... Based on witnessing election after election up close and personally, Scheer believes that the process “is intellectually dishonest and inevitably deleterious to the best interest of the voters.” Why? Because it results in the:

numbing effect of a modern mass media-observed campaign that requires such an incredible high-wire act—balancing fundraising with integrity, superficial sloganeering with profound commitment, and homogenizing the entire unwieldy package into a marketable commodity—that in the end, the candidate is transformed into a caricature who has difficulty remembering from whence he came.

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If anyone has more succinctly stated and summarized the folly we call presidential campaigns, I am not aware of it—and I read widely about the subject.

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