In this Sunday’s N.Y. Times, Michael Lewis reviews Karen DeYoung’s new biography of Colin Powell. Describing the book, Lewis notes that it is “as revealing as it can be and remain flattering, and as flattering as it can be and remain revealing.” He argues that DeYoung is overly sympathetic to Powell’s flaws and that she “leaves the reader with the sense that Colin Powell was a good man in a bad administration.” From Lewis’s perspective, however, Powell has consistently manifested a willingness to be a good “soldier” to better his career while manifesting enough doubt to maintain his credibility if things go wrong. As an example, Lewis points to Powell’s willingness to reveal his initial doubts and concerns about Iraq, after things went horribly wrong, to DeYoung and Bob Woodward.
Readers of his books like Moneyball and The Blind Side may be surprised by Lewis’s interest in political biography. But one of Lewis’s best, if perhaps most overlooked, books is Trail Fever: Spin doctors, rented strangers, thumb wrestlers, toe suckers, grizzly bears, and other creatures on the Road to the White House. The book is primarily a collection of Lewis’s columns from the 1996 campaign for the New Republic. Unlike other campaign books, which dutifully report on the main candidates’ backgrounds, policy positions, and debates, Lewis spends most of his time with fringe candidates, such as Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, and Pat Buchanan. Out of all the candidates, Lewis spends the most time with Morry “The Grizz” Taylor, a tire magnate who is running for the Republican nomination. You may never have heard of Taylor, but Lewis takes delight in describing how this force of nature takes to the political process. But Taylor is just one example. Lewis’s book is overflowing with examples of bizarre yet beautiful moments from the campaign: Keyes’ surprisingly captivating oratory; the union leader with the stuffed fawn on his wall; the Doles going off the dutifully watch “Independence Day” with a crowd of reporters. Because he is interested in genuine moments, Lewis is mostly bemused, disgusted, and finally bored with the day-to-day of the campaign. The entire process, Lewis notes, is designed by “rented strangers” to avoid anything that has not been planned, scripted, and focus-grouped to death. So he seeks out the fringes for moments of reality.
After pages and pages of describing his disgust with the political process, Lewis finally meets the hero of the book: John McCain. McCain speaks his mind. McCain is loyal, even when it hurts him to be. McCain is a war hero, but is self-effacing about it. He has an acerbic sense of humor. This may not be news to you now, but it was news back in 1996. Back then, McCain was probably mostly known as one of the Keating Five. But to Lewis, McCain cut through all the preprocessed nonsense speak and just said what he thought. McCain was exactly the opposite of Powell (as described by DeYoung). He did not undercut people. He did not care, above all, about his career or image. He was, as Lewis wrote in the introduction, an example of “the heroic possibilities of American politics.”
Lewis did a follow-up profile of McCain for the New York Times Magazine, entitled “The Subversive.” While I have not done a historical study of the McCain phenomenon, my guess is that Lewis is the one responsible for this senator’s leap into the national consciousness. If John McCain becomes our next President, “Trail Fever” got him started. Given that, it is perhaps no surprise that Lewis would review a biography of Colin Powell. Perhaps Lewis’ review is an effort to argue that Powell and McCain, despite many similarities, are quite different at their core.
Posted by Matt Bodie on November 27, 2006 at 02:16 PM
Comments
I’d like to see Lewis’s opinion of McCain today. He seems more media myth than man today. Powell was involved in the My Lai massacre cover up.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html
Posted by: Bart Motes | Nov 27, 2006 11:17:32 PM
It’s too bad, then, that McCain has turned out to be such a phoney about, for example, Jerry Fawfell, abortion, etc.
Posted by: Matt | Nov 27, 2006 10:08:02 PM