Bill Clinton used to get a lot of attention for his habit of reading four or five books at once–and quickly too. That hasn’t changed since he left office. According to his spokeswoman, the former president has already dispatched with David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, and he recently read the 399-page book about the famous race horse Seabiscuit in two days.
Adams and the sea are big with the current president, too. “I’m reading a lot,” Bush told reporters at his ranch yesterday. “I just finished ‘In the Heart of the Sea,’ by [Nathaniel] Philbrick. It’s a boat [sic] about the whaler Essex. It’s a really interesting book. Now I’m into the Adams book, by McCullough.” After that, his aides say, he’ll move on to a mystery, though which one remains just that.
Bush has also gotten a kick out of another new book that’s not on his public summer reading list: “The Big Enchilada,” by ad man Stuart Stevens. “Enchilada” is the first campaign book written by someone who actually worked for the Bush campaign, and Stevens created a stir among Bush loyalists when he decided last January to write an insider account of Bush’s run for office. “Is Stuart really writing a book?” they’d ask with a grimace.
No one close to Bush told Stevens not to write it, but many eyebrows were raised and a few nails were bitten. Some staffers worried about how they would fare in print. Others just thought it would be a violation of the Bush don’t-kiss-and-tell culture. But as Stevens jokes, “There was not much kissing going on. Hey, these are Republicans.”
Indeed, the book is more kiss than tell. “There was a great sigh of relief when the book came out,” says Mark McKinnon, Stevens’s campaign partner. It was McKinnon who gave Bush a copy of Stevens’ book last weekend when the media consultant was visiting the White House with his family. The president called McKinnon the next day to say that he liked it, especially the fact that Stevens seemed to get Bush’s world view. “He understands that I see the big picture,” McKinnon says Bush told him.
Stevens also gets Bush’s brand of sarcasm. If the book makes fun of anyone, it’s Stevens himself. In one typical scene Bush is reviewing an ad script over PB&J sandwiches. Here’s the passage: “What are we trying to say here?” he asks. “It’s about your priorities,” I said, forgetting that the word ‘priorities’ was slashed in bold letters across the piece of paper he held. He looked at me for a beat over his glasses and said, “Now I get it.”
A few early reviews have criticized Stevens for not dishing. Those hoping for dirt–even grit–will come away disappointed. “We’ve been conditioned by the Clinton world: Go to work for these people, then come away appalled,” Stevens says. Many Clintonites came away with fat advances to write exposes, including former secretary of Labor Robert Reich, political consultant Dick Morris and counselor George Stephanopoulos.
Stevens tries to warn readers in his opening note that “this is a different story.” He insists that the tell-alls are just contemporary versions of the insider book. His book, says Stevens, is more along the lines of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s “1,000 Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House”–which was “something [Schlesinger] was proud to be part of.”
“The Big Enchilada”–a title Stevens chose to capture the whimsical nature of the book–reads most like a travel book. That’s makes sense, since Stevens has written about his journeys through Africa and eating his way through France. “Going to Austin was a trek for me,” Stevens says. He was a slick New Yorker joining earnest Texans, a jaded cynic in a rodeo of optimists. Even Karl Rove, whom some describe as a reincarnation of Machiavelli, is in it for his affection for Bush. “Karl sold his business to do this campaign,” Stevens reminds me.
Personally, I like the way the book fleshes out characters like Rove, who refers to policy wonks as “propeller heads” and his direct line to Bush as the “bat phone.” The Austin-American Statesman criticized it yesterday, however, for reading “like a sitcom.”
That’s no surprise. Stevens, when he’s not writing ads and travel books, writes for TV shows like “Northern Exposure.” He is now working on a pilot for Showtime to rival “The West Wing.” The show will be a quirky, dark tale set in a governor’s office. “Governors are the last feudal lords,” says Stevens, explaining that the program deals with corruption and abuse of power. All the stuff that many wish were in his book.
