
Richard Reeves, author of the widely praised A Ford Not a Lincoln, has produced a startling off-camera, behind-the-scenes account of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, the Convention that gave America its new president, Jimmy Carter.
A witty and marvellously constructed mosaic, Convention has a rare immediacy, presenting American society at its most raw yet most self-conscious. With the use of a team of reporters to cover the participants not only during but also for the months preceding the Convention, the scene is built up. A cast of politicians and statesmen, newsmen and money-men, cops and hookers, hangers-on and hustlers provide both drama and farce. Deals are made and unmade, threats are hurled and enacted and careers, even lives, are made and broken.
From the much publicised 'youngest delegate' to the manager of the telephone company or the school teacher turned hooker for the week, every character in Convention illuminates a facet of America, its society and its politics. A fascinating account of the erratic route to supreme power, orchestrated by one of America's most perceptive political writers.
LOS ANGELES — In the early 1980s, in a book called "American Journey," I calculated that American corporate chief executive officers were making 30 to 40 times as much as they paid average production workers. Looking back at that, I see that I was surprised to learn that that ratio had increased from 25-to-1 in 1970 — and that in other developed countries the ratio was closer to 10-to-1.
NEW YORK — Glenn Beck does not like to be compared with Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest from Detroit. Coughlin, whose weekly show was listened to by as many as 40 million Americans in the 1930s, began as a Roosevelt New Dealer and ended up a raving anti-Semite.
NEW YORK — Speechmaking has never been among Mayor Michael Bloomberg's many talents. But he rose to the occasion last Tuesday when he chose to defend the rights of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a couple of blocks from what was the site of the World Trade Center before Sept. 11, 2001.
LOS ANGELES — If you think the Mel Gibson tapes are the biggest story out here, you would be wrong.
BELL, Calif. — This little city was a pleasant place to be last Sunday morning. There are nice gardens around small bungalows and four-family apartment buildings. Hundreds of kids in snappy soccer uniforms, their parents behind carrying coolers of food and drink, were headed for the perfectly groomed turf near City Hall.
LOS ANGELES — This is about what I think, expressed cleverly by another columnist, Froma Harrop of the Providence Journal:
RESEDA, Calif. — Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from the 27th District of California in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, is a congressman who is obviously not afraid of his constituents. Many are these days, but Sherman takes out advertisements in local newspapers urging people to come and reason with (or yell at) him at "Town Hall" meetings.
LOS ANGELES — Among the charges leveled against King George III on July 4, 1776, in the Declaration of Independence was this one:
WASHINGTON — The 300th British soldier was killed in Afghanistan last week, which means that, proportionately, Great Britain is paying a higher price in manpower and money out there. That's 300 dead in a 10,000-troop commitment compared with the United States' 1,126 deaths with a commitment of more than 94,000 troops right now.
WASHINGTON — Last Saturday morning, Mike Allen's Politico Playbook, the early-morning blog Washington whisperers wake up to, began this way:
LOS ANGELES — You can't fool all the people all the time, only about 48 percent. That, rather than the triumph of women billionaires, may be the abiding lesson of California's spring elections this year.
LOS ANGELES — President Obama, in an impossible position, decided to take a page from the Harry Truman-John F. Kennedy playbook as oil fouled the Gulf of Mexico and the second year of his presidency.
LOS ANGELES — In a rather charming video at randpaul2010.com, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Kentucky, Rand Paul himself, a libertarian by birthright, says that he was not named for Ayn Rand. The writer is acclaimed as a prophet by many libertarians, although she once said she would rather vote for the Marx Brothers than a libertarian.
NEW YORK — Henry Fairlie, the British-American contrarian who wrote for The New Republic and The Washington Post, among many others, derided the publication of the Pentagon Papers as nothing more than a summary of what Americans already knew about the war in Vietnam. To prove his point in those pre-Google days, Fairlie spent hour after hour plowing through newspaper, magazine and government archives, finding stories and public documents revealing the same information the Defense Department was classifying during the 1960s.
NEW YORK — Let us now praise famous cliches.
LOS ANGELES — There is a sweet little proposition on this year's California ballot, 15 by number. Authored by state Sen. Loni Hancock, a Democrat from Berkeley, Proposition 15 would institute public financing for one state office, secretary of state.
LOS ANGELES — In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. OK, so Bernie Madoff is a criminal. But a lot of other people on Wall Street and beyond are only crooks — so far.