My humble admiration, first and foremost, to twelve politicians—Mike Dukakis, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Howard Dean, John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and, yes, even Donald Trump—six Democrats and six Republicans whose days in the public spotlight pursuing office while courting political suicide are chronicled in this book.
Many sit on the sidelines of political change. This determined dozen put themselves in the arena, as Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910, vying for the ultimate prize of the presidency but also exposing themselves to ridicule and humiliation every time their motorcade pulled up to a curb. Their careers in military and public service and in business are deserving of genuine respect, and they have mine.
My additional gratitude goes to a thirteenth politician, Bill Clinton, whose stories overlapping mine are woven throughout the book. Governor Clinton and his 1992 campaign staff let me board their bandwagon for an unexpected multiyear journey that brought me around the world many times over. As my friends will attest, my carefully curated relics of those years reflect how much my time in Clinton’s shadow is deeply cherished.
One of the hardest things in life is admitting, and revisiting, failure. This book’s origin is a war story of political failure retold to me in a barroom in 2012 by my longtime friend Matt Bennett. Matt entrusted me with his 1988 campaign journal and bestowed me with his patience over the years as he reopened his wounds of battle for my forensic examination of the worst event in American political history.
I am grateful to the other witnesses with whom I spoke about the many angles at play on September 13, 1988. They shared their memories and helped me paint as complete a picture as I could of that day, mindful as I am that there are still deeper caverns of truth to mine. My sincere thanks to Madeleine Albright, Rich Bond, Joyce Carrier, David Demarest, Gordon England, Neal Flieger, Mark Gearan, Don Gilliland, Arthur Grace, Joe Lockhart, Mindy Lubber, Nick Mitropoulos, Sig Rogich, Jack Weeks and Jim Weller. My friend Steve Silverman, another 1988 veteran, gave me invaluable assistance as this project was just getting off the ground and conducted a number of the interviews for Part One of the book. For narrative purposes, Steve’s interviews and mine are commingled in the body of the book but noted as Steve’s in the endnotes.
My sources for Part Two of the book brought me on a time-warping journey across a quarter century of American politics. Marlin Fitzwater’s Call the Briefing started by giving me a deeper understanding of the supermarket scanner incident than is known through lore. Kent Gray showed me his painful scars of 1996, for which I’m grateful. Mike Feldman, Matt Bennett, Chris Lehane and Nathan Naylor added first-person recollections to my research on Al Gore’s trip down the Connecticut River.
On my Sirius XM radio show, Polioptics, Beau Willimon gave me a behind-the-scenes look at the Dean Scream, and Scott Sforza brought me on board for President Bush’s trip to the USS Abraham Lincoln. Mark McKinnon, Russ Schreifer and David Morehouse helped me better understand the linkage between the Kerry windsurfing expedition and Bush’s windsurfer ad. Will Ritter brought me into the entourage for Mitt Romney’s stop at The Villages, and on my radio show Jim Margolis helped me understand how the Obama ad team worked to exploit it. Steve Schmidt offered to share his thoughts about John McCain’s tough summer of 2008.
Part Three of the book is derived from my firsthand experience as a volunteer advance man for President Obama in 2009 and my armchair observations of the years that followed. During four of those years, 2011 to 2014, I had a special perch from which to watch as the host of Polioptics, where our hundreds of guests brought fresh insights and analyses of White House stagecraft to our studio. Adam Belmar, who held a job like mine during the administration of George W. Bush, had the vision to get the show off the ground, and Katherine Caperton produced it creatively and valiantly, week after week, during its enduring run of 159 episodes. The show’s high production quality and unique sound belied its thin skeletal makeup, a pathfinder for political podcasts that followed.
While they may not fully appreciate their influence on me and how my life evolved, my early advance mentors—Redmond Walsh, Noel Boxer, Mitchell Schwartz, Andy Frank, Steve Barr, Steve Rabinowitz and the crusty old master himself, Mort Engleberg—taught me how to treat all the world as a stage.
My intrepid colleagues during the Clinton years: directors of advance Paige Reefe and Dan Rosenthal; trip directors Wendy Smith and Andrew Friendly; director of communications Don Baer; personal aides to the president Stephen Goodin, Kris Engskov and Doug Band; and press secretaries Dee Dee Myers, Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart and Jake Siewert—and every advance man and woman with whom I served—taught me how to tell human stories and withstand heat from presidents and prime ministers. They also conspired with me to create a lifetime of indelible memories in a few short years working together at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and on epic trips to innumerable points on the compass.
This book began with an article in POLITICO magazine of which then-editor Susan Glasser, now the editor of POLITICO, was a champion from day one. My agent, Lauren Sharpe of Kuhn Projects, believed unflinchingly that the dark chapters of the Age of Optics could be a worthwhile chronicle of our political era and stuck with me through multiple iterations of proposals and pitching. My editor and publisher, Karen Wolny of St. Martin’s Press, had boundless faith that a first-time author could tell the tale. The team at St. Martin’s, Laura Apperson, Donna Cherry, Christine Catarino and Gabrielle Gantz, carried me the last mile in bringing the book to life.
Shrewd political observers, like my friends Jonathan Prince, Jeremy Gaines and Jacob Weisberg, were enlisted as extra eyes on the final page proofs, and Brian Steel serves as my extra set of eyes on life.
My oldest friend, Mark Leibovich, is also the most entertaining writer I’ve ever read. We tried to write our first book, Boston: Sports Hub of the Universe, on his dad’s typewriter when we were seven. While that project never got off the ground, his unparalleled genius as a journalist and storyteller has provided me with a role model ever since. My best friend, Adam Rosman, has been a constant rock of support since 1976 and remains my counselor in all things. My mentor, Joe Plumeri, showed me how passion and stage presence can be both compelling and motivating in business as well as politics. Working with Joe allowed me to open a new chapter as a practitioner of political stagecraft, one that continues to this day.
My parents, Howard and Phyllis King, gave unconditional support to my creative streak at an early age and without end, no matter which tangent it took. My in-laws, Ed and Donna Theobald, and my sister-in-law, Laura Theobald, gave me a warm hearth, hot food and cold drinks to support my writing on many weekends when I would steal away from parenting duties to churn out a few thousand more words late into the night.
Better than all of my sometimes exotic travel over the past many years, three simple trips, taken umpteen times between 1997 and the present, have been my favorite. The first was in Washington, D.C., a walk from near the White House, up Connecticut Avenue, to an apartment in DuPont Circle. The second was a five-minute drive from my office in Hartford, west on Asylum Avenue, to a home in the city’s West End. The third consists of three stops on the E line of the New York City subway system, from the World Trade Center to Greenwich Village. On each trip, the destination was always the same: home, to my wife, Amy, and kids, Toby and Annabelle. A dinner and movie with them in our living room, with our dog, Huck, lying nearby, is the best event of all.