The Problem with Political Books Today

Matt Bai: “I don’t know the authors of Shattered, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, but they seem like capable and energetic reporters. There’s no lack of industry in the breezy book they apparently wrote in less time than it takes me to finish reading one.”

“No, my problem is with the entire genre of contemporary campaign books, which don’t illuminate the soullessness of our political culture so much as they reflect it. You can’t really treat presidential politics as a form of shallow entertainment and then claim to be shocked when a shallow entertainer wins the presidency.”

“I get why today’s political writers would want to emulate the books a lot of us grew up reading… But you can’t actually write the books that a McGinniss or a Cramer wrote now, even if you have half their talent. That’s because, to quote ‘Hamilton,’ those guys were in the room where it happened. They were witnesses to history, at a time when history hadn’t yet conspired to lock them out.”