Bob Scheiffer's America

August 11, 2008
Veteran CBS newsman and Frontline
anchor Schieffer (This Just In
) compiles 168 essays spanning his career from the Nixon administration to the present day. He reminisces about the pretelevision era when politicians “had to be entertaining to hold a crowd”; with tongue-in-cheek rhetoric, the author creates his own exploratory committee because “everyone else seems to be doing it.... and people for some reason send them million of dollars.” In a critique of the current administration, Schieffer laments that “we had elected an administration that feared the future.” The hypocrisy of American foreign policy is brought to the forefront in a discussion about democracy, war and the loss of humanity in politics. As an ardent fan of human interest journalism, comic personal writing and America, Schieffer portrays citizens optimistically while harshly criticizing the current policies in Washington. Schieffer's ruminations are appealing (though hardly groundbreaking), but a choppy organization and a tendency toward repetition and overemphasis on a few themes detract from an otherwise humorous, albeit simple, collection of essays.