In anticipation of Robert Caro’s Passage to Power — which is out in just five weeks! — the New Yorker makes available seven of Caro’s previous pieces for the magazine.

The Washington Post runs a must-read piece from David Maraniss, author of First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton and the forthcoming Barack Obama: The Story, on the similarities between the two presidents.

“They were born on August days 15 years apart, at opposite ends of the baby-boom generation, Bill Clinton in 1946 and Barack Obama in 1961. Both came into the world under circumstances that made it surpassingly unlikely either boy would grow up to be president of the United States. It is hard to imagine two places further from the centers of power than southwestern Arkansas or Hawaii. Neither state had produced a president before. But there was so much more working against them than geography.”

“William Jefferson Blythe III and Barack Hussein Obama II were the namesakes of fathers they did not know. Billy’s dad, a traveling salesman from Texas, was killed in a car crash before his son was born. Barry’s old man, a traveling student from western Kenya, also died in a car crash. His son was 21 then but had never lived with his father. Both boys’ mothers created myths about their fathers to ease the pain; in truth, the sons were almost certainly better off without them.”

A new release of The War Room, the 1993 classic documentary on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, is out today with added bonus features.

Dave Weigel: “We get a new, full movie, Return to the War Room, which re-interviews the first movie’s subjects (not Bill Clinton). It’s interesting to see the spoils of victory — these people have put together comfortable Washington/New York axis-of-power lives — but apart from some good new anecdotes, it’s not overly involving. The better stuff comes when Hegedus and Pennebaker talk at length about the film and reveal how they made it. The two big takeaways: They got lucky, and probably no one will ever get this lucky again.”

The New York Times notes Newt Gingrich is quoting from Ballots and Bandwagons by Ralph Martin, a 1964 book that focuses on five historic brokered conventions.

Susan Eisenhower, the 34th president’s granddaughter, is expected to testify before a House subcommittee on national parks to object to designs for a Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, the AP reports.

She says the design focuses too much on Eisenhower’s humble roots, instead of his accomplishments.

The Salt Lake Tribune
takes a look at the early days of the Republican Party, when the
founders of the fledgling anti-slavery party “saw Mormons as their
enemies,” and how that evolved into the modern trend of Mormons
overwhelmingly supporting Republicans.

“The GOP’s first party platform
in 1856 took direct aim at polygamy, placing it in the same sinister
frame as slavery in the hope of cultivating the votes of Christians wary
of the spread of these dual threats to the republic… Later on,
Republicans used their congressional power to wipe away any secular
power Mormon leaders had in the Utah Territory and were the main backers
of a law that disincorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints… Republicans over the next several decades targeted the LDS
Church over polygamy and suspicions that Mormons were attempting to form
their own sovereign country in the Mountain West.”

“The GOP’s
take on social issues, such as abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and
gay marriage, drew Mormons into the conservative fold beginning in the
1970s. Church apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who supported the right-wing
John Birch Society and served as Agriculture secretary under President
Dwight Eisenhower, helped further push his fellow Mormons into the
conservative camp. A report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
in January showed that about 74 percent of Mormons lean toward the
Republican Party.”

Daily Telegraph: “Students of economic history are in for a treat. An official studying deep in the bowels of the US Treasury library has recently uncovered a prize of truly startling proportions — an 800 page plus transcript of the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944, the meeting of nations which established the foundations of today’s international monetary system.”

“All previous accounts of Bretton Woods have been second hand, with historians apparently completely unaware that a full, and one must presume faithful, transcript of proceedings, had been taken.”

Out this week: Nixon’s Darkest Secrets by Don Fulsom.

“Richard Nixon left the White House in 1974 as our most disgraced president, but the American people never knew the full extent of his demons, deceptions, paranoia, prejudices, hatreds, and chicanery.”

From the political dictionary: “brokered convention”

Dan Amira notes Mitt Romney has spent much of the presidential campaign butchering one of the great political phrases of all time: “Politics ain’t bean bag.”

“As far as we can tell, Romney has not accurately recited the aphorism a single time during this entire campaign. Nitpicking? Sure. Romney is usually only off by one letter. Still, ‘politics ain’t bean bag’ has been repeated for over 115 years now. It’s four words long. It shouldn’t be too difficult to master.”

“The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.”

— Nancy Reagan, in a 1995 video, saying her husband Ronald Reagan gave leadership of the conservative movement to Newt Gingrich.

[Read more…]

A reader flags this passage from Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1968, which was published in 1969, on Gov. George Romney, Mitt’s father:
 
“Above all, he looked like a President. Handsome, silver-haired, robust, masculine, smiling or stern, he seemed cast for the part by Hollywood’s Central Casting. Correspondents who liked him called him ‘Mr. Straight Arrow;’ those whose flesh crawled at his pieties called him ‘Mr. Square,’ or worse… He would make a forthright statement one day, then, like a man making up his mind in public, contradict it or modify it on another.”

Washington Whispers: “President Obama’s slow ride down Gallup’s daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history.”

Of course, there is little significance to approval numbers and re-election this far out, so the comparison is interesting but meaningless.

Jonathan Martin recommends:

Happy Days Are Here Again : The 1932 Democratic Convention, the Emergence of FDR–and How America Was Changed Forever by Steven Neal.

A reviewer for the official National Park Service bookstore at Ford’s Theatre has recommended that Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling new book about the Lincoln assassination, Killing Lincoln, not be sold at the historic site “because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication,” according to Salon.

Washington Post: “The sales of Killing Lincoln attest to the fact that TV celebrity and strong storytelling trump accuracy. Since its publication the book has been riding at the top of the bestseller list, and soon after its release O’Reilly signed a contract to write two more books, one of which will be another presidential history.”

The Passage of Power, the fourth of Robert A. Caro’s Lyndon Johnson books is coming out in May, the AP reports.

And a fifth volume will be written for what was supposed to be a three-, then four-part series.

A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll finds Americans would choose Ronald Reagan over Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 36% to 29%, as the past president they would want in the White House in these trying times.

Thomas Jefferson came in third place with 14% from a list of five past presidents that also includes Harry Truman at 8% and William Henry Harrison at 1%.

Just published: FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 by David M. Jordan.

“A fast-moving, blow-by-blow account of the often neglected wartime
campaign that pitted Franklin Delano Roosevelt against
Republican Thomas E. Dewey, with pollsters divided to
the very end. For political junkies there is suspense,
backroom dealing, and surprises about both presidential and
vice-presidential nominations, as well as where the
parties would stand on the future both at home and
abroad.”