Review: What it Takes

What It Takes: The Way to the White House by Richard Ben Cramer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book has been on my shelf for years, but I was waiting for the perfect moment. My plan was to tackle it during the summer of a presidential election, to fully appreciate the book’s insights. But COVID prevented me from coming home during the last race, and so the book languished until the next election.

And here we are. When I read the first page of this book, Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee. It was the week after his disastrous debate on June 27th, in which he appeared so manifestly senile that he instantly lost the confidence of his party. Indeed, I think I may have begun the book on the day of his interview with George Stephanopoulos, wherein he tried to reassure his supports that he had merely had an “off night.” That proved unconvincing.

As disheartened as I was by the situation on the Democratic ticket, it was a pleasure to have Biden’s backstory so compellingly detailed in this volume. For Biden made a notable run back in 1988, thirty-six years ago, as a relatively young man. Curiously, his campaign then was derailed by another—and much different—scandal: plagiarism. The press found out that he had been accused of copying a paper in law school, and he had the bad habit of quoting other politicians in his speeches without always giving them credit.

The Democratic ticket was rocked by another scandal that year, that of Gary Hart’s infidelity. The heavy favorite to win, Hart appeared untouchable until he was caught with Donna Rice—a beautiful young woman who was, notably, not Hart’s wife. After trying and failing to deny and prevaricate, he dropped out—only to reenter the race months later, with virtually no hope of winning.

Biden and Hart are only two of the four Democrats whom Richard Ben Cramer profiles in this behemoth of political reporting. The other two are Dick Gephardt, the representative from Missouri, and the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts. To this Cramer adds two Republican candidates: Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. Each man gets ample space, as Cramer takes us from their respective childhoods, through the primaries, all the way to the big day in November.

In this monumental story, some themes stand out. One is that of personal tragedy. Bob Dole suffered horrendous injuries during the Italian campaign of World War II, recovering the use of his arms and legs slowly and painfully over a period of years. Joe Biden suffered a grievous loss when his first wife Neilia and one-year-old daughter Noemi died in a car crash. Added to that, he suffered a life-threatening brain aneurism shortly after dropping out of the 1988 race. Dick Gephardt’s son, Matt, barely survived a bout with cancer, while Dukakis and Hart both had troubled marriages, if for different reasons (Dukakis’s wife, Kitty, was an addict, while Hart… you know that story).

If there is one candidate unmarked by personal tragedy, it is the eventual winner, George H.W. Bush. True, he was shot down in the Pacific during World War II, but the rest of his career was success followed by success. Indeed, he is described by Cramer as a relentless optimist whose entire strategy in life consisted of being as affable as possible. It seemed to have worked for him.

Another major theme in this book is the press. Both Biden and Hart are eaten alive by scandals (amusingly, by scandals which probably wouldn’t even register in today’s news cycle)—a single, arguably irrelevant misstep leading to a kind of journalistic feeding frenzy that destroys their public image. The other campaigners avoid that fate, but still must contend with the dangers of the Fourth Estate. A casual, offhand remark can be misinterpreted, misunderstood, and blown out of proportion. An ill-conceived image—such as Dukakis in the tank—can (excuse me) tank a campaign. And as journalists search for a compelling Narrative, all of the words or actions of a candidate can be twisted to fit into a preconceived caricature.

But if the book has a single, guiding idea, it is the exploration of how personality is reflected in politics. Each of the candidates is strikingly different, and these differences shape their campaigns. Biden is stubborn, ambitious, and focused on his close circle of family (qualities which have not changed!). Hart is intellectual, idealistic, analytical, while Gephardt is surprisingly suggestible and somewhat vapid (he would later become a Big Oil lobbyist, undermining all the causes he previously supported). Michael Dukakis is conceited, perfectionist, correct to a fault, and intolerant of human frailties. Bush is almost canine in his loyalty and friendliness, while Bob Dole is… well, Dole is a character.

If Cramer has a thesis to prove, then, it is that the eventual success or failure of the campaigns—despite all the ads, consultants, rallies, volunteers, town halls, fundraisers—ultimately comes down to personality, to the bedrock of individual character. And he proves this, not through argument, but through convincing, play-by-play, blow-by-blow narration of the campaigns.

I should comment on the book’s style. Some prose is to be sipped, while some is to be gulped. Cramer’s prose is like an Olympic-sized pool, in which the reader thrashes about. He writes with such energy, and such an abundance of detail, that it is as if the chain-smoking, hopped up reporter is breathlessly dictating a telegraph into your eardrum. Paradoxically, however, although each sentence crashes into the next, the book itself has very little forward momentum—perhaps because he must switch focus so often, or perhaps just because the race is a foregone conclusion.

As far as political analysis goes, the only book I can easily compare it to is Robert Caro’s Means of Ascent—another masterpiece on an American election. The differences are pronounced. Caro focuses far more on questions of strategy—on how LBJ spoke to voters, traveled the countryside, gathered money, crafted ads, and—yes—stole votes in order to secure his victory. Cramer’s book feels light in comparison, focusing as it does on foibles of personality, with the machinery of the campaign in the background. Even so, this book was a terrific read, providing me a kind of historical baseline from which to compare the present campaign. We seem to have gotten considerably weirder in the interim.



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