“Blood Sport”–Reflections on a Key Phrase in Bill Clinton’s DNC Speech

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Bill Clinton’s DNC speech Wednesday night was such a barn-burner that a few things just whizzed by me as he delivered it. Reflecting on them later, this line jumped out at me.

“Democracy does not have to be a blood sport.”

I’ve been thinking about this since, and today I realized why the phrase has stuck in my mind–they are the same words as the title of James Stewart’s 1997 book, Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries. Published just as Special Prosecutor Ken Starr was jailing Susan McDougal for 18 months on contempt charges* and targeting the Clintons; it was especially critical of Hillary who declined to cooperate with Stewart on his book. It’s significant to me that Bill chose to utter the phrase in this week’s speech, so many years after the Starr investigation and the impeachment by the House of Representatives, which was followed of course by the acquittal in the Senate trial that followed. I surmise he still views that toxic period as the nadir of the politics of personal destruction, and so knowingly used the phrase for the millions listening, to characterize the way President Obama has been demonized by his foes. The two words created an equivalence between the rampaging campaigns of hate toward each man and disdain for the office.

I should add that it was evidently an ad-libbed phrase, since according to the Atlantic‘s Dashiell Bennett, in his analysis of the prepared text vs. the transcript of what Bill Clinton actually said, the two words were not in the former.  It’s also fascinating to juxtapose the prepared text with what was delivered. The word count of the former was 3,136, whereas the latter was 5,895, meaning Bill Clinton extemporized with 2,759 words, or nearly the length again of the prepared text.

The title of Stewart’s book may itself have been inspired by the ripped-up letter found among Vince Foster’s personal effects after his 1993 suicide, in the early days of the Clinton administration,

“I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.”

I don’t own a copy of Stewart’s book, but when I find a copy I will check to see if Stewart provides the origin of his title anywhere in the book.

At the end on Wednesday night, when President Obama came out and the two men embraced like brothers, I saw a vulnerability in Bill Clinton. As he grasped the binder with the printed text he’d riffed on for 49 minutes, he was still holding on to the words, looking almost unsure of what to do with his hands. It was a very human moment.

* With Carroll & Graf Publishers in 2001, I edited and published Susan McDougal’s book, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the Clintons and What I Learned in Jail. One of the two times I met President Clinton was at a dinner given in New York City in 2002 by the directors of a documentary, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, based on the book of the same name by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons. Joe was there and Susan was an honored guest. I was pretty stunned when after the meal, Bill Clinton walked into the private dining room of the hotel restaurant. This was after his heart surgery–he’d lost a great deal of weight and he seemed smaller (I had something to compare with, since I’d also met him in 1992, when he was not yet the Democrats’ nominee for president, an encounter I wrote a few days ago on this blog). He put his arm around Susan, whom he’d pardoned before he left office, a noble pardon, I will add. She introduced me to the president, explaining I had been the editor of her book. He looked me in the eye, and said, “Well, you did a good thing, publishing her book. Thank you.”

 

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#FridayReads, Sept. 7–Tony Hillerman’s “The Dark Wind” & Jonathan D. Moreno’s “Mind Wars”

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#FridayReads, Sept. 7–The Dark Wind, one of Tony Hillerman’s early mysteries featuring Jim Chee, the Navaho policeman. I’ve loved these books for many years, and was happy to find this secondhand copy of the 1982 book from a sidewalk seller on Broadway last week. If you love mysteries and haven’t read Hillerman, what are you waiting for?

Also, I’m still reading a book I’d blogged about last week, Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century by Jonathan D. Moreno, on the attempts of US defense and intelligence agencies to develop enhanced human capacity for soldiers and agents in the field.  This work, much of at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where the Internet originated, is shrouded in secrecy. However, Moreno–a medical ethicist whose father was a prominent psychotherapist who at one time worked experimentally with LSD–reveals a great deal of fascinating information. By the way, googling Moreno’s name and “Mind Wars” yields articles like this one from Wired magazine relating this field of scientific research to the Jason Bourne movies

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What it Takes*

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Terrific essay by fellow blogger Lance Mannion at his self-named site. It’s called Shake Every Hand, Kiss Every Baby, and it’s a very readable analysis with much humor of the one-on-one people skills that successful politicians employ in connecting with voters.

His post reminded me of when Kyle and I met Bill Clinton in April ’92, prior to the NY primary, weeks before he had wrapped up the Democratic nomination. This was in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street. First Hillary, then Bill spoke standing on the open bed of a pickup truck, and when they were done, climbed down into the crowd. They met and conversed with everyone there, shook every hand, and campaigned like he was trailing in the polls, not leading. Bill’s hands were soft and big–it felt like shaking hands with a pillow. He looked me in the eye and asked for my vote in the upcoming primary. I then volunteered for his fall campaign against President Bush, joining an ad hoc group in Manhattan called Street Corner Speakers for Clinton. That was a great campaign year.

In considering what makes a successful politician, Lance’s references run the gamut from Dickens’ Hard Times to George McGovern’s early days as a hopeful South Dakota pol. I was glad to see that Andrew Sullivan linked to it this morning at The Dish on the Daily Beast in a share of Lance’s post Andrew called The Handshake Factor.

I recommend you read the whole piece. Here’s a taste of it, the same excerpt as on The Dish.

“You get out there and you shake as many hands, kiss as many babies, ring as many doorbells as there are minutes in the day every day.  Ideally, before the campaign’s over you’ll have met every voter and asked them for their vote personally.
“Of course the higher up the ladder, the larger the constituency, and the more that ideal becomes an impossibility. So you’re forced to do a lot of it by proxy.  Instead of meeting voters one at a time, you meet them in crowds. Instead of showing up on their doorsteps, you show up on their TVs and computer screens and mobile devices. You spend more time with big donors than with small business owners. And what used to be a matter of just doing your job, going out to listen to constituents tell you their troubles and ask for your help, becomes a photo op. If you worked your way up the political ladder, and you know what’s good for you, you remember what the point was and you keep in mind who deserves your attention when you’re out on the stump. And when you stop standing in front of the crowd and dive into it instead, all the old skills come back.”

* In borrowing this post’s title from Richard Ben Cramer’s great book of the same name, I say thanks to Mr. Cramer.

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Great Content from the Public Domain Review

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I’m enjoying a website I recently discovered, devoted to sharing works of all kinds in the public domain, from the historical, visual, literary, and musical worlds. It’s called the The Public Domain Review. Here’s a screenshot of what their front page looks like today. H/t Shaun Usher of the great site Letters of Note, who brought the Public Domain Review to my attention.

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Michelle’s Dress of Many Colors

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Interesting comment by Eric Wilson in the Times on the dress Michelle Obama wore at the DNC last night.

Like the fool he is, Romney surrogate John Sununu is in the media trying to stir up some issue about the cost of the dress, which I’ve tweeted about below. FWIW, Eric Wilson reports that the retail cost of Michelle’s dress is approximately 1/4 of the garment Ann Romney wore the night she spoke at the RNC. Sununu’s accusing the Obama camp of ‘lying,’ when it’s news orgs reporting the cost.

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NOIR, a New Magazine

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Now here’s a new magazine I can really get behind. According to Lori Kozlowski in Forbes, it’ll be a tablet-only publication called Noir, devoted to the nether world of mysteries, crime fiction, and tough-guy movies. While they have no issue ready yet, you can ‘like’ their Facebook fan page, which I have done. Co-founder Nancie Clare, an ex-LA Times Magazine editor, says that she and her partner in the venture, Rip Georges, “were. . .obsessed with the mystery genre. In the past, there were a couple of magazines I worked on, and I would always try to figure out a way to do a special issue that would be their Raymond Chandler-driven or their mystery-driven issue. It’s been a recurring theme throughout our careers.”

Adding more specifics, and suggesting they may be publishing original mystery fiction, Clare and Georges continued,

“When we say Noir, there’s definitely a genre of literature you think about. But what’s extraordinary is back from Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe, it has evolved. We will certainly respect the history, but some of the best hard-boiled fiction is being written today. The idea is to be respectful of the past, but focus on where this is going. . . Crime fiction is more passionate, sexier, more hard-boiled, more violent, and more exciting than ever.”

A Kickstarter campaign for the publication is starting soon, and I’ll look to share the link and donate when it’s up. The irresistible detective magazine covers shown below were part of the Forbes story, used by permission of the LA Times.

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What Were Editors & Execs at Dutton & Penguin Thinking?/Part II

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Because I’ve edited & published a number national security books* containing sensitive information that ended up being vetted by government agencies before publication, I’ve been following the ‘No Easy Day’ situation carefully. Yesterday I shared a blog post, questioning how Dutton and Penguin could’ve been so careless in seemingly just accepting the pseudonymous ex-Navy Seal author Mark Owen’s claim that a lawyer he’d hired had said his manuscript didn’t breach any disclosure rules. If that is what happened–and there’s a lot of murk here so one can’t be sure–that’s not the way publishing houses are supposed to deal with these books.

Today, another shoe dropped on the author. According to Bloomberg News, at a press conference today, chief Pentagon spox George Little told reporters, “Sensitive and classified information is contained in the book.” It was a judgment I’ve been waiting to hear rendered since last Friday when it was revealed the Pentagon had sent the author a letter, saying his book may have violated national security. I guess they took the weekend to read it.

Another nugget in the Bloomberg article is that the author’s attorney–Robert Luskin, defense attorney for Karl Rove in the Valerie Plame matter–claims his client’s agreement with the Navy merely “invites but by no means requires” him to provide his manuscript for vetting, that he’s not obliged to do so. Doesn’t sound like any non-disclosure agreement I’ve ever heard of.

While the Pentagon warning about possible seizure of “royalties, remunerations, and emoluments” has been directed to the author, Penguin could also suffer, having heedlessly brought out an unvetted book deemed harmful to nat’l security, and then being forced to pull it from distribution, or even defy the government. More from the Bloomberg story on the Pentagon press conference.

In response to reporters’ questions today, Little gradually toughened his statements, first saying the book contains “sensitive” information, and then saying it “probably” contains “classified” information before saying the Defense Department believes classified information is in the book and finally that it does contain such information. The Pentagon has consulted the Department of Justice about the book while reviewing all legal options, Little has said. “It is the height of irresponsibility not to have this kind of material checked for the possible disclosure” of classified information, Little said today. The need for a pre-publication review is “a no-brainer,” Little said. “This is common sense.”

*Among these national security books have been The Politics of Truth–A Diplomat’s Memoir: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity (Carroll & Graf, 2004) by Ambassador Joseph Wilson. For his book, which came out more than a year before his wife Valerie Plame brought out hers (with Simon & Schuster), Joe asked the State Dept. to vet it, even though it had been a number of years since his retirement from the diplomatic corps. Another title, mentioned in yesterday’s post, was On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence by Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA clandestine operations, Europe.
//end//

 

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What Were Editors & Executives at Dutton & Penguin Thinking?

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This post has been updated. New material in bold.

For more than a week I’ve been following coverage of the forthcoming book, No Easy Day, by the pseudonymous Mark Owen and a co-author, supposedly detailing the undercover mission Owen was part of that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden. While it seems that Penguin is going ahead with publication Sept. 4–and news organizations have been reporting on the book’s contents, after purchasing copies ahead of the official on-sale date–I am pretty much flabbergasted that editors and executives at Dutton, the Penguin division bringing out the book, evidently allowed the book to go to press even though the author had failed to submit the manuscript for the vetting required under his non-disclosure agreements with the military.

Reporter Husna Haq writes in the Christian Science Monitor, “According to the terms of Bissonnette’s non-disclosure agreements, he would have to submit any manuscript for pre-publication review and obtain permission before publishing it. . . . The book was not vetted by government agencies prior to publication. Disclosure of classified information is a crime and the US government may be entitled to all ‘royalties, remunerations, and emoluments’ from [the author]’s disclosures, the [Pentagon] letter warned.” To be clear, the Pentagon’s letter was addressed to the author, and not to his publisher. He stands to lose the most from all this, but if the Pentagon does rule in the next week that the book’s disclosures go beyond what he was entitled to reveal, and that they’re harmful to national security, Penguin will be under some pressure to cease distribution of the book. If they defy the government after that, they run some risk too, at least to their reputation, and maybe financially, as well.*

Eli Lake in the Daily Beast/Newsweek reports that a “spokeswoman for . . .  Dutton, said the book was vetted by a former special-operations attorney provided to the publishing house by the author. It was not, however, reviewed by the military, according to Pentagon spokesmen.”

This is really lame. So staff at Dutton decided to just accept the author’s representation that everything with the ms. was okay because he had shown it to an attorney of his own choosing who gave it a pass? If that is what happened, and multiple news accounts indicate it did, this was truly amateurish.

In my years editing and publishing topical nonfiction, I had a number of sensitive books that required careful handling with government agencies. One of them was On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence by Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA clandestine operations, Europe. Well in advance of publication in 2006, the author submitted the ms. to the agency’s Publications Review Board. After they read it, a two-way communication ensued and we edited the final ms. to accomodate their concerns. We didn’t necessarily like that this was necessary, but that was really beside the point. It had to be done, and it was. I should add, however, that even though the book was by implication and inference critical of the Bush administration, none of the edits requested had anything to do with political sensitivities; it was entirely about operations and maintaining security.

Let me make clear, so that there’s no doubt here. I’m not ‘siding’ with the government–I’m an editor and publisher by temperament and experience. I’m for information being shared as freely and openly as possible. But when an author has a prior legal agreement with any agency–be it governmental, corporate, or just between himself and another individual–as a publishing house you can’t just blunder forward, with some stupid ‘let the chips fall where they may’ attitude. The risks of non-compliance are too great.

Penguin/Dutton may get their big launch date this Tuesday, but they also may have sown an enormous hassle for themselves by failing to ensure that their author had had his manuscript properly vetted. I’d dare say Penguin has enough troubles with the Department of Justice right now, in the ebook agency pricing lawsuit, they didn’t need this one too.

* H/t Mike Shatzkin who suggested a helpful revision to this paragraph, clarifying that it’s the author who has the most exposure to the Pentagon’s claims. I had an email exchange with another publishing friend, who, feeling waggish, said maybe Dutton and Penguin planned all this, to get the book maximum publicity. Friends on Facebook, where I shared the first version of this piece have said the same thing. But I can’t conceive this is correct, though that may show my own risk-aversion and lack of imagination. I think the editing and publishing broke down and shows incompetence. Weirdly, publicity and sales of the book may even be fueled by the controversy, at least for a while, but if this has been a deliberate strategy, it seems a crazy, high-risk way of going about it all.

* H/t Mike Shatzkin who suggested a helpful revision to this paragraph, clarifying that it’s the author who has the most exposure to the Pentagon’s claims. I had an email exchange with another publishing friend, who, feeling waggish, said maybe Dutton and Penguin planned all this, to get the book maximum publicity. Friends on Facebook, where I shared the first version of this piece have said the same thing. But I can’t conceive this is correct, though that may show my own risk-aversion and lack of imagination. I think the editing and publishing broke down and shows incompetence. Weirdly, publicity and sales of the book may even be fueled by the controversy, at least for a while, but if this has been a deliberate strategy, it seems a crazy, high-risk way of going about it all.

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