America In Search Of Itself – Theodore H. White, 1982 ★★½

Once More Unto the Breach with Teddy White

Before Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980, American politics had fallen into a rut. Elections had been between two clear known quantities who generally agreed on the state of the world and what the United States needed to do. Differences centered on process, not goals.

Reagan was different. While fellow Republicans saw some use for government, his view was far more negative. After decades of expanding federal reach, Reagan wanted not only to cut taxes but slash the bureaucracy that made Big Government big.

For many liberals, the arrival of Reagan in 1980 came like a slow-motion nightmare. With an incumbent president seemingly powerless under the grip of inflation and an embassy full of American hostages in Iran, Reagan’s ascendency had the makings of an existential crisis.

Breach Of Faith – Theodore H. White, 1975 ★½

From a History to a Screed

It begins at the conclusion, a few dry words from Warren Burger, the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court that ended a stalemate: “The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated specific need for the evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

With that, the curtain rang down on what had been one of the most consequential and popular presidencies in American history. What began as a counter to New Frontier adventurism and Great Society excess ended with genuine horror as well as displays of shocked virtue that would have embarrassed Captain Renault. Like this book.

In spinning his story, Theodore H. White often leaves key details unexplained, apparently figuring readers are also in the know and just want this recent tumult explained. He is not writing a history but a sermon, complete with hellbent evildoers and brave angels.

The Making Of The President 1972 – Theodore H. White, 1973 ★★★½

Nobody Loves a Winner

The problem with total victory is that victors often have a hard time overcoming them. It offers no moral guardrails, no ego checks to counter bad impulses, while falsely beguiling the victor into seeing only a clear road and an open horizon ahead.

All this was a problem for President Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign long before the votes came in. The fourth and final volume in Theodore H. White’s “Making Of The President” series examines what happens when four years of success becomes its own poison pill.

In so doing, White turns in an engaging book even while it struggles to get a handle on the elephant in the room: the arrests of men connected to the Nixon re-election campaign who had broken into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel.

The Making Of The President 1968 – Theodore H. White, 1969 ★★★★

There's a Riot Going On

That saying back in 1968, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” clearly didn’t apply where Theodore H. White was concerned. When it came to that year’s presidential election, he handed you the whole meteorological report.

White’s “Making Of The President” series was three books into its four-book run when this 1968 edition came out, at over 500 pages by far the fattest and most sprawling of them all. He goes on too long in several places, data maven that he was, but when he’s done filling you in on the election’s many twists and turns, you get a strong sense of living through one chaotic year, and of why it turned out the way it did.

Did the country really go through a period of dramatic leftist radicalization and come out of it electing Richard Nixon? Yes, and the two things were closely related. White, a genteel liberal himself, makes clear a candidate touting law and order had considerable appeal when cities were ablaze with riot and campuses under student siege.

The Making Of The President 1964 – Theodore H. White, 1965 ★★★

Over Before It Began

Theodore H. White lost more than a president and friend in 1963. He also lost a chance to follow up his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 U. S. Presidential election with something nearly as riveting.

It wasn’t a race in 1964 but a coronation. The question wasn’t if Lyndon Johnson would be re-elected president, but by how wide a margin. Johnson’s campaign themes of peace and prosperity resonated with voters. After the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy, Americans were not ready to have a third president in just over a year.

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Barry Goldwater was barely trying to win over the undecideds. He delivered instead a bold libertarian message in a tone White likens to an Old Testament prophet, adopting a slogan that seemed unconvinced by itself: “In your heart you know he’s right.”

The Making Of The President 1960 – Theodore H. White, 1961 ★★★★

Tarnished, But Still A Classic

Can a book’s credibility be hobbled by privileged access to its primary subject? Can that same access, used to its fullest degree, redeem the book’s faults and render it an enduring classic?

Yes, and yes. Here’s the proof.

Covering the 1960 Presidential election, Theodore White interviewed John F. Kennedy, flew with Kennedy, ate with Kennedy, gossiped with Kennedy. He did everything but sleep with Kennedy, though he does wind up in bed with the guy here, figuratively speaking.

It was for a good cause. This book remains not only a vital record of one of the country’s most charismatic politicians but a deep dive into how a presidency could be won. Even White later admitted he got carried away, but his invested narrative and sense of purpose pull you in.

In Search Of History: A Personal Adventure – Theodore H. White, 1978 ★★★

Prioritizing the Political Over the Personal

Tragedy nearly struck journalist Theodore H. White twice in November 1963. Right after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, White’s aged mother suffered a heart attack while White was visiting her in Massachusetts.

At that very moment he had a summons from the President’s widow, Jacqueline. She wanted White’s services immediately for an article to honor her husband’s legacy in the next issue of Life magazine. He asks: “[I]f the widow of my friend needed me and my mother needed me, what should I do?”

The answer: He left Mom to await a doctor with his wife, and sped off to Hyannis Port where Jackie told him how her husband’s Presidency reminded her of the popular musical Camelot. White dutifully made the comparison in his article; a myth was born.