Stuart Stevens, who was the media director of the Bush for President campaign, has written a book: "The Big Enchilada."
"The Big Enchilada" is, I believe, the first book about the campaign as a whole, as opposed to the Bill Sammons and Jake Tapper books which had as their focus exclusively the Florida recount.
It will officially be published tomorrow, but I was sent an advance copy by Simon and Schuster, so I read it on the plane to and from a speech to the Missouri House Republican Caucus at the Lake of the Ozarks on Friday night.
In doing so, I violated all of my rules about reading books:
- That it be a book by a recognized literary giant: Clive
Cussler and Dick Francis being two examples, or;
- That the book contain a lot of pictures: The George W.
Bush Inaugural coffee table book would qualify here; or
- That I am mentioned in it: There are no books which meet
the criteria under this heading.
Stevens writes with a stream-of-consciousness style which many Mullings regulars will find familiar - and amusing. It is an insider's look of the ups and downs of the campaign from the pre-primary days in Austin through the primaries, the conventions, and all the way to election day.
People who have worked in campaigns will find much of it familiar, but the scale of a Presidential race is vastly different than even a large U.S. Senate or Gubernatorial race. It is the difference in reading a book about General Motors if you have worked in a 300-person company. The terms are familiar, but the size and complexity are breathtaking.
There is one paragraph in the book which, I think, illustrates George W. Bush's attitude toward the entire process better than I have heard or read it described before. Stevens is writing about the third debate which took place in (as luck would have it, as this is where I was when I read it) St. Louis:
"Everybody always compares a presidential race to a marathon, but really it resembles a long baseball season, with its cycle of daily games, some more meaningful than others, intense series against key rivals followed by lulls, all building to one climactic moment, the final out of a World Series. Bush understood this rhythm and viewed the daily tumult of the campaign with a certain bemused detachment."
That does describe Bush, who was the managing general partner of the Texas Rangers. The owner of a baseball team has to have a completely different personality from the owner of a professional football team. The Major League season is 162 games - ten TIMES more than the NFL season.
This also helps us understand better the rhythms of this Administration. It will be four years, not 100 days, or six months.
To read about my amusing trip to Missouri,
find out about Clive Cussler and Dick Francis,
and see a slightly naughty Catchy Caption, go
to the Secret Decoder Ring.
There will be weeks in Congress like the recent one just prior to the August recess which was like the Yankees playing the Red Sox: High pressure; the managers having arranged the rotations so each team's best pitchers face each other; everyone who can possibly play and contribute is in the lineup; every pitch is important; every base runner is poised to go on every swing; every grounder, every liner, every fly ball played precisely by the fielders who know exactly where they will throw the ball on a hit or an out.
Then there are weeks where you are playing the team at the bottom of the division. You don't want to lose, but you can give one or two position players a rest, not play your starting catcher in the day game following a night game, give a young pitcher a chance to air out his arm. The game still counts in the standings, but it's not the same.
Bush understands this. He understands that to get to the playoffs you have to have more wins than the other guys, but you know that you are not going to go undefeated - or anywhere close to undefeated.
Look at the pennant races through yesterday afternoon. Not counting Seattle (which, at 84-33, has been unconscious all season) the other division leaders are as follows:
AL East: Yankees 69-49
AL Central: Cleveland 64-52
NL East: Philadelphia 65-52
NL Central: Chicago 66-50
NL West: Arizona 66-51
See a certain pattern here? And, none has a lead of more than three games on the team in second place in each division.
That's the rhythm that George W. Bush understands and which is another attribute which makes him so different from Bill Clinton who was like an NFL owner.
Every bill, every subsection in every bill, every amendment to every subsection to every bill was life or death - like every formation in every play in every game of a 16-game season.
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