WINNERS AND LOSERSThe 1988 Race for the...

WINNERS AND LOSERS

The 1988 Race for the Presidency by Sen . Paul Simon (Continuum: $17.95)

Despite his experiences in the 1988 election, where lack of money forced him to suspend his campaign before Super Tuesday and where “spinners” said Americans didn’t want a bow-tied, bespectacled president, Paul Simon emerges much as we know him in these pages: spirited, modest and sanguine about the American people. Simon credits his wellspring of optimism to his father; active in the Civil Rights movement in the 1930s, he taught Simon to persevere even though his causes might be unpopular.

As it becomes apparent here, however, Simon’s optimism is as much a savvy political strategy as it is a simple celebration of old-fashioned American values. Simon has developed an unusually wide popularity on Capitol Hill for someone with his left-of-center politics (one jacket cover accolade, for example, comes from Bob Dole) because he avoids specifically lambasting the policies of his opponents and tries to find something charitable to say about even his ideological opposites: “Ronald Reagan got elected because he projected conviction. There’s a lesson in that: You have to stand for something. And you have to give them a dream.”

Simon’s account of the campaign is often less-than-revelatory (“Mike Dukakis had a hard time conveying warmth”), but it is brightened by some delightful and insightful stories about his fellow candidates, from Gary Hart (“Ignore the fund-raising and political calls your staff wants you to make,” Hart suggested to Simon. “Instead, for six months go to a mountain retreat and reflect on what the nation needs, and then come down and give that message to the nation”) to George Bush (“He has inclinations rather than convictions”) and Bob Dole. A demonstrator thrust a sign in front of Dole’s face, Simon recalls, and asked, “Why did you support a 1982 tax increase?” Without a smile and without a moment’s hesitation, Dole turned on his heckler and said quietly, “Go back to your cave.”