Campaign America '96

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is the political diary of a couch potato who is also a novelist (Notts), professor of literature at Notre Dame and author of The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left. Day by day, beginning with December 31, 1995, O'Rourke charts what he learned about the 1996 presidential election by watching TV and listening to the radio. He paid little attention to the network evening news programs though, and concentrated on C-SPAN, Nightline, the Sunday morning talk shows, Larry King, the McLaughlin Group, Jim Lehrer's NewsHour and 60 Minutes. The radio programs he follows are those of Rush Limbaugh and Diane Rehm. And, of course, he tuned in to the debates and the televised moments from the national conventions. O'Rourke is at his best when he is like one of those folk who wants to tell you all about what he saw on TV the night before. Only he does it with wit and flair, coming up with pointed observations (e.g., the Clinton team really didn't think they were going to win in 1992 and were unprepared to govern). However much O'Rourke argues that TV presents the true face of American social culture, he's dealing with old news here; by the time the returns start coming in, the reader, entertained at first, feels trapped in a season of endless TV reruns. (Sept.)

Library Journal

O'Rourke (English, Univ. of Notre Dame) has written an almost day-by-day account of media coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign and how he "consumed and processed" that coverage. He looked at the coverage provided by the major television networks, C-SPAN, newspapers and news magazines, talk radio, and other media. The diarylike format of O'Rourke's book facilitates the presentation of his personal views about the campaign and the media, but it also results in considerable repetition. In addition, although the format is an effective way of conveying the author's initial reactions, it is not conductive to reflection or analysis on the part of author or reader. On several occasions the author offers interesting observations but fails to develop them. While its focus is narrower, general and lay readers might prefer Michael Lewis's commentary on the 1996 campaign in Trail Fever (LJ 6/15/97).Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette

Kirkus Reviews

An engaging, nicely exasperated account of the 1996 campaign for the presidency, largely consisting of a day-by-day journal novelist O'Rourke (Notts, 1996, etc.) kept from January until election day. The twist here is that O'Rourke's journal is entirely about what he has seen on television, becoming as much a commentary on commentators as on the candidates and their spin doctors. The virtue of this approach is that it reminds us of the extent to which our opinions are shaped by the talking heads infesting the airwaves, and O'Rourke has some scathing offhand judgments of commentators and reporters. The downside is that it the book seems finally rather like sitting, for a very long time, with a cranky, bright, frequently witty friend, given to off-the-cuff analysis. Still, some of the set pieces here, including O'Rourke's dissection of Dole's and Clinton's convention speeches, are hilarious, and his portrait of the obsessive shallowness of the media is convincing and alarming. A highly unusual contribution to the study of politics and media.