All the Truth Is Out

Starred review from July 28, 2014
Political columnist Bai (The Argument) makes a persuasive case for reexamining the career of presidential candidate Gary Hart, whose downfall in the wake of speculation about an extramarital affair, he argues, marks a turning point in the deterioration of American political journalism and democracy. Bai analyzes the forces coalescing around the scandal that brought down the Democratic frontrunner in May 1987, and captures those frenzied days in a masterfully written account. The possibility that a candidate might be lying about his sex life was not usually relevant, given the close relationship between major news outlets and politicians, but much had changed, especially given Watergate’s influence on a generation of reporters. By the time allegations of adultery met Hart’s campaign in New Hampshire, two previously separate streams, the tabloid press and political journalism, joined forces. The result has been “an unbridgeable divide... between our candidates and our media” and an accompanying lack of substance and transparency in the political process. Based on extensive interviews with reporters and campaign insiders, including Hart and Donna Rice (the then 29-year-old model photographed sitting on his lap), Bai appraises Hart the politician, political visionary, and high-minded yet obstinately private man, and asks what the country might have lost with his foreshortened career. This first-rate work of political journalism will fan embers long thought to have gone out. Photos. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

July 15, 2014
A new look at a scandal that changed American politics.In 2002, former New York Times Magazine chief political correspondent Bai (The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, 2007) wrote an article about Gary Hart's 1987 presidential bid, a campaign that ended with the media's splashy coverage of Hart's apparent adultery. The author arrived "at the same psychoanalytical conclusion on which a lot of Hart's contemporaries had settled back then-that Hart had to have harbored some self-destructive impulse to begin with," risking his reputation by getting involved with "some model." Now, more than a decade later, Bai takes a far different view of the episode: "It was the story that changed all the rules" for journalists covering politicians; "the moment when the worlds of public service and tabloid entertainment...finally collided." The author argues that the Watergate scandal "left the entire country feeling duped and betrayed"; political reporters wondered how Nixon, "a man whose corruption and pettiness were so self-evident," could have won two presidential elections. Suspicion came to focus on candidate Hart because of his widely known womanizing and his aloof and detached manner. For this book, Bai interviewed Hart, as well as reporters and editors involved in publicizing the alleged affair. The Washington Post reporter who aggressively pursued the story told Bai that he had felt "relieved, then triumphant" when Hart withdrew from the presidential race. The way he saw it, writes the author, "he and his colleagues had managed to protect the nation from another rogue and liar." As Bai sees it, however, the nation lost "one of the great political minds of his time." Hart's attempt at another run failed, and until recently, he was marginalized from politics.Hart once said that obsessive scrutiny of sex as an indicator of character would give America the politicians it deserved. In this probing narrative, Bai comes to another dismal conclusion: It would give America the news coverage it deserved-entertainment-driven, dominated by shallow pundits, and bereft of intellect and ideas.

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Starred review from October 1, 2014

On May 6, 1987, journalist Paul Taylor jarred Gary Hart, the leading Democratic presidential contender, with the question "Have you ever committed adultery?" Bai (national political columnist, Yahoo! News; The Argument) claims that this question changed the political landscape, and his account makes this case forcefully and with insight. Bai spent 20 hours interviewing Hart about his life and politics and his alleged tryst with model Donna Rice to offer this sometimes funny but more often unhappy narrative of Hart's political demise--and more important, the morphing of responsible political journalism into the paparazzi hordes that American celebrity culture demands. He argues that Hart's fall was, in no small part, owing to his arrogance and the development of new technologies such as fax machines and CNN, which spread truth and lies 24/7. VERDICT The author takes inspiration from Richard Ben Cramer, whose What It Takes (1992) is often considered the best book about any presidential campaign. Here Bai shows he is Cramer's worthy successor--his important cautionary tale will resonate with journalists and members of the media as well as with political players and readers of current history. [See Prepub Alert, 5/4/14.]--Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014
Before 1987, when front-running Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart was photographed on a yacht with a beautiful model sitting on his lap, such examples of womanizing had been overlooked by political reporters. Hart's fall from grace signaled massive change in the way that politicians would be covered, with more emphasis on moral character, fairly narrowly defined, and less on ideas and issues. National political columnist Bai (The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, 2007) examines how we've come to such trivial coverage of political candidates. Still maintaining a right to privacy while longing for elder-statesman status, Hart offered prescient predictions on issues from energy dependence to Islamic terrorism but couldn't see the changing trend in political news coverage. Bai ponders the influences of the Vietnam and Watergate era and the culture wars, which led to a new focus on personal morality, along with such changes in journalism as rising celebrity coverage and the 24-hour news cycle. Bai laments not only what the change in political reporting cost Hart personally but also what it has cost the nation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)