What I read in 2023 (Part 2 of 7)
This is the second part of my ongoing review of the books that I read in 2023. You can read the first part here.
The book that I am going to talk about here made it to a number of highly regarded best-seller lists back in 2013 - Financial Times, The Economist among others. It is also a great representative of a writing genre that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s - a quasi-documentary style, behind the scenes view of a great spectacle, pre-meditatively written to provide spin-off content for TV and podcasting. In general though, while I found the book highly readable and wittily composed, I found it a little short on spirit and ultimate takeaways. Here's diving a bit deeper-
It is just twelve years, but 2012 seems to be a long time ago. Back then,? the Internet was a thing that enabled revolutions. Facebook was overwhelmingly a force for the good. Donald Trump was just a controversial reality TV star. Nobody gave him, or Joe Biden, a chance of ever being the US President. All sides of the political spectrum in the US had some agreement on what constituted political misconduct and hate speech.?
This book is a behind-the-scenes account of the 2012 US Presidential Election campaign. Highly subjective. Written as a screenplay. With a predominant focus on personalities rather than circumstances and larger socio-economic forces of the time. And with an intent to reduce an entire electoral cycle of 18 months into a series of easily imbibed and narratable anecdotes which you can tell your friends over dinner. In a way, it is an ode to electoral tactics over political strategy. A pep-up soundtrack for speech coaches, polling consultants and political donors to make them feel important. That is why it is such a compelling page turner. Never mind that objectivity leaves the chat right at the cover page.?
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It takes what traditionally should be the content of a documentary, and writes it in the style of a movie script. But because it focuses so much on? character sketches? of even the non-serious presidential contenders as they hurtle towards election day, it ends up inadvertently bringing to light the ideological diversity and eccentric flavors within the Republican and Democratic parties - an aspect that is usually lost on foreign readers.?
In hindsight, the book also appears to be a distant prequel to the rise of Trump in 2016. He himself sits on the sidelines through this book, cheekily shifting his support between Republican hopefuls. But even in 2012, there were enough takers within the party for? the first of his trademark “manufactured conspiracy theories” - that Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the US and hence ineligible for Presidency - a weapon that the Republican party under Trump has effectively and cynically used since his ascent to Presidency.?
Closing this book left me with a very nihilistic view on democratic politics, regardless of the superb readability of its content. If what the authors portray is the true picture of elections in America, it is disappointing to see real electorates’ issues mattering so little in the final political calculations.
If by 2012, that exceptional man of color, who had catapulted himself into power out of nowhere four years ago on the basis of a message of hope and change (and his challenger too), was fretting over poll ratings, courting wealthy political donors even as America’s inequality widened and was willing to submit to experts to tell him what to say and when - then it was the victory of tactic over strategy. Of bureaucrats and insiders over people. Of one dollar, over one vote.?
In the next part of this essay, I will continue with my focus on America, looking at a book that examines the economic impact of the Great Financial Crisis in a very personal, yet academically rigorous manner.