Publisher or Pamphleteer?

On the surface, it seems like one of George Bush’s thousand points of light: A publishing house takes yawn-inducing discussions of public policy, repackages them in book form, markets the resulting collection through telegenic spokespeople, and ends up with a very profitable bestseller. Doing well by doing good: It’s just the thing to warm a Republican’s kinder, gentler heart, right?

Well, no--not if the book is Democratic campaign material. In that case, if you’re a member of the Bush-Quayle team, you go to court. On Sept. 25, the Bush campaign raised numerous eyebrows by filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, charging that Times Books had made an illegal corporate contribution to the Clinton-Gore campaign by publishing 200,000 copies of “Putting People First: How We Can All Change America,” described in advertisements as “The only book that details the Democratic program--as articulated by the candidates themselves.” The book is currently No. 5 on Publishers Weekly’s trade-paperback best-seller list.

Are the Republicans serious? Absolutely, although it’s highly unlikely the FEC will do anything about the complaint before the general election next month. Bobby Burchfield, counsel to the Bush-Quayle campaign, says the Clinton-Gore ticket’s self-described “collaboration” with Times Books is “a blatant attempt in our view to get around the $55 million federal expenditure limitation” by “pushing all these costs off on a private vendor.” Burchfield is asking the Democrats to reimburse the book publisher to the tune of nearly $2 million--the Republicans’ estimated value of the publishing services provided.

Times Books, a division of Random House, isn’t exactly quaking in its boots, and is very likely rejoicing at the extra publicity the Republican complaint will give the Clinton-Gore book. “I can’t even begin to understand what motivated them” to take legal action, says Times Books publisher Peter Osnos. “We were puzzled (by the complaint), because it didn’t seem to us that anyone would want to be associated with a restriction on the First Amendment. . . . We saw this as a very conventional book deal: We offered to pay (the Clinton-Gore campaign) some money, but they researched the issue and said they couldn’t take it, so we didn’t give them any.”

So why didn’t Times Books do a similar title for Bush-Quayle? Says Osnos, “Bush has a record to defend rather than a platform to present. We would have done the Republican book if they had asked us.”

In fact, no such book exists. But Bush supporters, if not the Bush campaign itself, were able to place one pro-Bush title with a sympathetic publisher, although it can’t boast Random House’s rich literary history. According to Publishers Weekly, Annapolis-Washington Publishing Co.’s only title to date is “Slick Willie: Why America Can’t Trust Bill Clinton.” And who wrote this book? Republican fund-raiser Floyd G. Brown, the mastermind behind the infamous Willie Horton ads and, more recently, the Gennifer Flowers hot line.

“Slick Willie” . . . Now there’s a title that would inspire the Administration to sing the praises of the First Amendment.