One of the remnants of having grown up in New York in the 1980s is my continued addiction to reading the New York Post. Yes, it’s a tabloid. Yes, it has become a purveyor of right-wing propaganda. But reading it remains part of my daily routine.
Part of its continued charm is that it is what it is. It has no pretense that it is high art. It entertains more than it enlightens and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Politics has its own form of tabloid journalism, and none is better than the post-election book. My first introduction to the genre came in 2004, when Newsweek published “Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future,” which the publisher acknowledged “does little to dispel [John] Kerry's own critique of Newsweek's ‘gossipy’ reporting.”
In 2008, there was “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” which took it to a new level of insider post-election gossip. That was followed up four years later with “Double Down: Game Change 2012,” a book that promised to “take the reader into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign for a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.”
Perhaps the most honest assessment of these books came from the New York Times book reviewer who said of the 2012 edition: “Those hungry for political news will read Double Down for the scooplets and insidery glimpses it serves,” as the authors cater to “readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign.”
Which brings me to this week and Jake Tapper and Alex Thomspon’s latest version of this well-established formula. Their focus is on sins. Particularly one, so-called original sin. Spoiler alert if you’ve managed to evade the press tour…
