guaranteed rental income insurance | Watch Jeb Bush and beware politicians bearing books
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Politicians’ books are worthless pap, but as Jeb Bush shows, a pile of books beats a soapbox for improving one’s standing
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush signs his book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, at the Ronald Reagan Library. Photograph: Brian Cahn/Zuma Press/Corbis guaranteed rental income insurance
Jeb Bush left office six years ago, at the age of 54, and basically, has not held a job since. There was talk of him stepping forward to help rescue the Republican party from its 2012 hopeless slate of candidates, but he demurred. And there was talk about him becoming the National Football League commissioner at the tail end of his term as Florida governor, but Bush said he wouldn’t even consider his next career step until he was out of office.
He decided, evidently, to do – at least, officially – almost nothing at all.
Until now. Now, he has co-written a book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution. On Sunday, he did all the morning talk shows. He’ll be talking about this book for months and months to come.
And that’s what this column is about: books by politicians. Books as political career-building blocks. Books as legitimizing devices. Books as political objects.
It is as expected as kissing babies that a politician who is aspiring to national office will write a book. Beside me, at my desk, for reasons I can’t fathom, has been Mark Rubio’s face for the last several months, on the cover of his book. Everybody who is going to run for president in 2016 will have a book. Maybe two.
I think we can all safely agree that no one, except perhaps the emotionally disturbed, has ever read one of these books. It transpired during the Republican race last year that Rick Santorum had not quite read his own book. It is not a requirement, or even an expectation, that ambitious politicians write their own books.
Barack Obama wrote a revealing book before he was a plausible contender, before he was likely at all to be anyone, and he probably wrote it himself. Then, after he became a viable candidate, he wrote another, probably much less by himself, which carefully said nothing at all.
Still, these dishwater dull and insipid books are powerful. This is effective media.
In Jeb Bush’s case, a book wipes his indolence clean. The man might reasonably be hardpressed to explain just exactly what he was doing for the past six years, and on what basis was he supporting his family (which would open up the issue of sweetheart consulting deals and overpaid speeches). But having a book, especially on a policy topic, shows he was being an expert, pursuing the public’s welfare, solving problems, that he was out-front, that he was leading. To prove it, he wrote a book.
His book, as these books are, is one moderately diligent speech and the rest is almost wholly valueless padding.
The core material itself – the basic stump speech, which he will now repeat at forum after forum – is hardly all that interesting. Bush tries to walk the fine line between Republican troglodytes who oppose all immigration reform, and the obvious necessity for a more tolerant position. In this, he offers a series of banal and slightly more tolerant policy proscriptions.
But pay no attention to that, because no one will. Rather, the point is that because of this book, which no one will read or seriously review, Jeb Bush is now a spokesman for this issue. And that puts him on television as a man with a mission, instead of as a mere candidate. He doesn’t have to say what is obvious (“I’ve just been waiting around for my time to run for president”). He can say, “I’m deeply concerned about immigration.”
Still, don’t think a book by a climbing politician is just propaganda. It doesn’t even provide that amount of feeling and commitment. In fact, politicians are really careful to say mostly nothing at all in their books – lest, when they do run, they are held accountable for what they may have written.guaranteed rental income insurance
These books a really more sleights of hand. They’re pretend books. It’s like being named a chairman of a worthy cause. It’s wholly symbolic.
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So why do publishers collude in this deception?
For one thing, the publisher doesn’t really have to pay you. You certainly don’t want to look like Newt Gingrich when Rupert Murdoch used his book company, HarperCollins, to funnel an extra $4.5m to Newt. (Indeed, if you hold office, there are no rules governing this sort of thing.)
And you get free publicity. Jeb Bush’s book tour masking as campaign launch will actually sell books. Not a huge number, of course, but perhaps 30-40,000 – that’s a profit of several hundred thousand dollars to a publisher.
Still. Here’s a book without real thought, or information, or meaning, besides self-promotion, which exists only to provide a pretext to get the politician-author on television. You would think a publisher would have some gatekeeper pride before so willingly becoming part of this charade. At least, you might think the publisher would worry about the devaluation these phony books might have on books as a whole. (Really, it’s hard to look at any book the same way, after you’ve tried to read one of these.) But alas …
Curiously, these politicians who have written (or who have had someone else write) these phony-baloney books, actually come to think of themselves as authors, with a stack of new books always at their elbow. It’s almost impossible to visit one of them and not come away with an autographed copy of your own.
So here is Jeb Bush: with his book in hand – his artifact, his prop – on the hustings, surely aiming for his shot.
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