The Making of the President 1960

The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White, a senior journalist for Time magazine, was a runaway bestseller and winner of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction. In the book, White covers the presidential campaigns from their genesis in small rooms through the primary campaigns through the general election and to the vast public stage of election night.

In reading the book, one is struck by how much has changed in American politics over the last 48 years. First, there weren't nearly as many primaries as there are today. Much of the manuevering to gain the candidacy was still controlled by the state political machines and their financial backers. Second, this was the election that determined that a Catholic could win in a national election in an overwhelmingly Protestant United States. Third, civil rights was an enormous issue and Northern black voters became a tremendously important voting bloc. Fourth, the "New South" was continuing to fracture away from the Democratic party, largely because of the civil rights issue. This was to culminate in Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968 which, arguably, won him the presidency in that election. In the 1960 election it appeared that one could appeal to the northern, urban black vote or the Southern vote, but not both. The Kennedy-Johnson ticket was able to successfully do both, where not having a southerner on the ticket, Nixon-Lodge could probably not have. Fifth, the amount of money spent by the campaigns, even adjusting for inflation, was miniscule compared to the fortunes poured into the current political campaigns. Sixth, and not least, this was the election where television came into its own as an integral piece of the American electoral process.

Looking at the electoral map of the few most recent presidential elections and comparing them to the 1960 map, the differences are stunning. Instead of the South being a Republican stronghold, it was a Democratic stronghold. California went Republican. Texas went Democratic. New York was actually in play (despite eventually going Democratic).

White does an excellent job of analyzing the racial, ethnic, and religious divides in the American body politic during the 1960 campaign. Further, his examination of the sectional differences (farm belt, New England, industrial midwest, et al.), is outstanding.

In the end, Kennedy won a substantial electoral vote victory while managing only a miniscule win in the popular vote. Obviously, all the factors above played into this. Ultimately though, White argues, that it was Kennedy's strategy to play for the big states and have Johnson marshal the south that won him the presidency. He also believes that Nixon's lack of strategy and strategic failures (not deciding early enough whether to go for the northern black vote or the southern vote, not bringing Eisenhower into the campaign enought, etc.) may have been decisive as well.

In all, The Making of the President 1960 is a top-notch book that is well-deserving of its laurels. The only fault I found with the book is that it does tend to be a bit of a Kennedy hagiography. It's very clear that White had great respect and admiration for Kennedy and I think that colors the reporting in the book. However, don't misunderstand me, White brings the campaign of both camps to life and does highlight the things that Nixon did well. In sum, this is a great book to read, especially in an election year.

Reading The Making of the President, 1960

I'm currently reading, The Making of the President, 1960. It's excellent so far, but I haven't been devoting enough time to reading this week.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a fictionalized series of stories about his experiences in the Vietnam war. And yet, it's a lot more than that. It's a reflection on life, dreams, death, and above all, storytelling. O'Brien takes care to note that much of "story-truth" which is objectively untrue, is often more reflective of actual events than "happening-truth" which is to say, the perspective of an omniscient narrator. "Story-truth" is a much more human way to approach things because it's how we actually experience the world. For example, when talking about a fellow soldier getting blown up by a booby trapped artillery shell, O'Brien talks about how the actual experience is looking at the soldier, looking away from the blast, looking back at what remains, looking away again, and then coming back to the actual horror of what happened. You get a much more personal feel and experience with "story-truth" than with "happening-truth." "Story truth" isn't some objective truth, but it's true as far as the character in the story, or a person's memory remembers it as truth.

O'Brien's writing is absolutely gripping. The stories are all tied together through his Vietnam experience but range from his current (as of the writing) middle-aged self, to Timmy as a 4th grader. Every story is compelling in it's own way, but what's most impressive is the immediacy of each story. You are there. You are watching Curt Lemon get blown up. You are retrieving his yellow slimy guts from the banyan tree. Moreover, you're stunned by how everything can go from tranquility to horror in just the space of a few words. And a very few words at that.

I've read many books on the Vietnam war: journalistic accounts, oral histories, memoirs, military histories, political histories, you name it. The Things They Carried is exceptional among all these books because O'Brien's facility with the language envelops you into the text. Whether or not you want to be, you're in Vietnam with him. You're at the Canadian border considering dodging the draft. The war, O'Brien's war, becomes your war even if you weren't born yet. The Things They Carried isn't just a book about the Vietnam war; it's a book about what it means to have human emotion and a human psyche. Simply put, this is one of the best books I've read in years, maybe ever. Don't wait. Go read this book right now.

Change to the List

After much consideration, I'm dropping Catch-22 from my reading list. It's one of my favorite books and I've already read it in the neighborhood of 4-5 times. I don't think that there's much to be gained by a re-read at this point in the context of this project. There are plenty of other books out there. In it's place, I'm adding White Noise by Don DeLillo. I've heard plenty of excellent things about DeLillo over the years and yet I've never read any of his work. This novel made Time magazine's list of top novels since 1923 (what Time refers to as all-time). So it's the new addition.

So, the current list"

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (finished Jan. 22)
   
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (finished Feb. 3)
   
3. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
4. All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (finished Feb. 19)
   
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Deliverance by James Dickey (finished April 1)
   
7. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (finished June 6)
   
8. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
9. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (finished May 1)
   
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (finished March 6)
    
11. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Candide by Voltaire (finished Feb. 23)
    
14. Don Quixote by Cervantes
15. White Noise by Don DeLillo (finished May 29)
    
16. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
20. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
    
21. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
22. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
    
25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (finished June 15)
    
26. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
28. Night by Elie Wiesel
    
29. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (finished May 6)
    
30. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
31. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (finished April 13)
    
32. The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward (finished March 27)
    
33. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
35. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (finished April 28)
    
36. The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White (finished May 22)
    
37. (placeholder)

The Postman Always Rings Twice

James M. Cain...father to generations of hack noir writers. Perhaps I just hate the genre, the "hardboiled" style (yes, I really dislike Hammett too), but I really didn't like this book at all. I finished it yesterday morning before work and then took some time to try to figure out why The Postman Always Rings Twice book rang in toward the end of Modern Library's list of the top 100 20th C. novels. Apparently it made the list because this 1934 novel gave birth to the noir genre of the "hardboiled" style. Which is to say, it's a gritty, earthy, drama where the protagonist isn't a private eye, but rather a victim, perpetrator, or accomplice to a crime. Why this is a good thing, I'm still not sure.

Anyhoo, TPART is the story of a cagey drifter (yup, a new cardboard archetype), a "dame," and her decently well-off husband who she was never really in love with. Guess what? Surprise, surprise...the drifter and the dame fall in a bizarre kind of "love" and try to off the husband to get his money and collect on the insurance. Sound familiar? Yeah, because billions of hacks have been writing this crap ever since and it never gets any better in the re-telling. The drifter, Frank Chambers, can best be described as a cunning (but not smart), brutal thug with no redeeming qualities. Really...none. He's the main character and I kept hoping that bad things would happen to him. Crowbar to the crotch maybe. Something like that. If it's possible, Cora, the "dame," is even worse because she's brick-wall stupid to boot. Her husband, the Greek, is just boring. You don't like him, you don't dislike him, you just feel bad for him that these to yay-hoos are trying to kill him. So this short book has it all: murder, blackmail, domestic violence, car crashes, possible rape, lawyers, plot twists...everything except characters that you can remotely give two shits about. And that to me, along with giving future hacks 2 dimensional characters to work with, makes TPART a monument to suckitude.

I will say this for Cain, blessedly, the book was slim. He didn't waste words and the plot was fast-paced. Thank heaven for that, because I don't thing I could have spent 10 more minutes with that book. Easily the worst book on this list that I've read so far.