The Front Runner, Movie Tie-in

that you really don t need to cater to reporters anymore, because you can talk to your own email list directly instead. Candidates routinely complain that reporters never talk to them about the actual substance of governing, but the truth is that with few exceptions, when you ask them to do exactly that, their reflexive response is no.
 
At the heart of this changed dynamic, though, isn t merely a technological shift in the nation s media, but a cultural one. There was a time when politicians and the journalists who covered them, however adversarial their relationship might become at times, shared a basic sense of common purpose. The candidate s job was to win an argument about the direction of the country, and the media s job was to explain that argument and the tactics with which it was disseminated. Neither could succeed without the basic, if sometimes grudging, cooperation of the other, and often, as in the case of Hart and some of his older colleagues in the media, there existed a genuine trust and camaraderie. Modern media critics might deride these kinds of relationships as coziness or corruption, but there was a very real benefit to it for the voters, which was context. Reporters who really knew a politician could tell the difference between, say, a candidate who had misspoken from exhaustion and one who didn t know his facts. They could be expected to discern between a rank hypocrite, on one hand, and a candidate who had actually thought something through and adjusted his views, on the other.
 
In his engaging book The Eighteen-Day Running Mate, about Tom Eagleton s disastrous foray into national politics, Joshua Glasser describes how a bevy of reporters actually camped out in Eagleton s hotel suite so they could be there if McGovern called to offer him the number two s

oil-stained alley in which reporters cornered the candidate and interrogated him about the blonde in his apartment. . . . Bai s important call for perspective is a reminder to all of us in the press and the electorate to recognize the complexity of the human condition, whether we re casting aside candidates because they wear a funny helmet in a tank or because they once committed adultery.
Slate
 
Fast-moving [and] vivid. . . . This book will tell you a lot about what politics asks of and takes out of people, and about the highly imperfect ways in which we now assess character and substance when choosing our leaders.
The Atlantic
 
You think you know it all: Donna Rice, Monkey Business, Hart taunting the press. You don t. The combustible mix of new technology and politics was birthed in [the 1987] presidential campaign, and there was no turning back.
NPR
 
Bai . . . tells [Hart s] story with details that only great reporting can provide.
Los Angeles Times
 
A masterfully written account . . . this first-rate work of political journalism will fan embers long thought to have gone out.
Publishers Weekly, starred review

Bai shows that he is [Richard Ben] Cramer s worthy successor his important cautionary tale will resonate with journalists and members of the media as well as with political players and readers of current history.
Library Journal, starred review
 
  In the tradition of his friend Richard Ben Cramer, Matt Bai astonishes us by delving deeply into a story and thus overturning our views about how the press should cover politics. This fascinating and deeply significant tale shows how the rules of American politics and journalism were upended for the worse by the frenzied coverage of Gary Hart s personal life. The soot still darkens our political process.
Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
 
What a tally of loss is to be found in this passionate and unsparing book about a turning point in modern America an insider s account, brilliantly told by one of America s finest political journalists.
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower