Thoughts on Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes, and the Lonesome Death of Political Journalism

Just over two years ago, I wrote about What it Takes: The Way to the White House and what it meant to political writing, especially campaign books. I was of the opinion then that it was the high water mark of such books and with its commercial failure, it marked the death of proper political journalism.

If anything, I feel even more strongly than I did on New Year's Day of 2011. Moreover, I think the consequences of it are infinitely worse than I did then. For a democracy to be worthwhile, it has to be informed. Otherwise we're a land of the blind, where the one-eyed man is king.

That's more or less where we already are. Imagine just about any modern politician running fifty years ago, armed with little more than their silly platitudes and absurd talking points. Do you seriously think that any of them would last more than five minutes before they were shamed into committing suicide?

We have access to more information more affordably than at any other time in human history. Virtually anything you want to know is at your fingertips. Yet people manage to know even less than they did just a generation ago. It's remarkable when you think about it. Our grandparents knew more about the basic functioning of their democracy from reading a daily newspaper than we do with literal encyclopedias on our telephones. As literacy rates skyrocket, actual knowledge is declining.

Politics used to be about persuasion; convincing people that disagree with you that your platform is best for society. That hasn't been true in some time. politicians now pander to our predetermined beliefs, which are often breathtakingly ignorant. Political consultants and lobbyists (who are, with shocking regularity, the same people with different titles depending on whether it's an even or odd numbered year) will tell you that this is democracy in its purest form, which is a lie.

Modern communications and microtargeting don't persuade anybody of anything as much as they tend to reinforce existing positions and drive turnout. It's all very scientific, to be sure, but it exists only to play to stupidity. It doesn't educate or elucidate and it isn't supposed to.

The same is increasingly true of journalism, which is now thoroughly targeted to existing biases and only barely pretends otherwise. Why else do Fox News and MSNBC even exist?

Virtually every political campaign book in the last twenty-five years have been little more than opportunities for insiders to badmouth one another and deflect blame from themselves. Expand the tabloid format by 300 pages and that's your book.

What it Takes was very different. It was almost a series of mini-biographies of the major candidates that went into great detail about what shaped them and why. In some cases, Cramer interviewed the candidate's grade school teachers. Yes, the book was a thousand pages long, but you learned more than that consultants are human garbage, which everybody already knew.

I believe that the commercial failure of What It Takes sent a powerful message just as the information revolution was beginning. Detail and depth are the surest way to the remainder bin. Nobody wants to read something that they don't already know or doesn't confirm to what they already believe. Nothing succeeds quite like intellectual laziness and underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Nobody wants to be challenged about anything, especially their system of government.

What It Takes is considered by political journalists to be the most influential book ever written, but that doesn't change the market and it sure as hell doesn't change the attitudes of editors and publishers. And in the end, it doesn't change us.

Prior to 1992, people were complaining that no one was writing books like What It Takes. But Richard Ben Cramer did, and no one bought it. As I noted two years ago, Cramer still owed his publisher $200,000 back from his initial advance and he never wrote about American politics again.

Cramer died Monday evening of complications of lung cancer. He was 62 years old. Of course, every political writer in America has published tributes to his ability and the majesty of What It Takes. But none of them are doing what would be the most fitting tribute to Richard Ben Cramer of all: Doing their jobs the way he did his.

If you want to know how much poorer we are for his loss, you should buy a copy of What It Takes, read it, and imagine how much different things might be if more people wrote and read books like it.