In the months leading up to the presidential election, bookstores are filled with election memoirs. Most of these titles are ghostwritten. They lack psychological insight, are unable to convey a moment, and instead typically offer readers the most stilted self-portraits, created in a mocking hurry. In fact, they’re an excuse for an aspirant’s book tour, perhaps an appearance in The View, essentially a campaign ad sandwiched between two covers.
But these self-serving measures should not be an indictment of the larger genre of political autobiography. The really good books are written about politics and power from the inside. And for all its flawed dignity, there are few professions more humane. Politicians must confront both the irresistible temptation of high office and the inevitable shattering of lofty ideals. So politicians end up providing a very good narrative. After all, some of the world’s most important writers started out as failed leaders or disgruntled government officials, including Niccolo Machiavelli, Nikolai Gogol, and Alexis de Tocqueville.
Although the books on this list were published many years ago, they are far removed from today, which makes them much more interesting than the quick-fire books that have been churned out for the current election season. It has become. Although some of them are set overseas, the essential moral questions about power they document are universal. Each piece is a glimpse into the minds and personalities of those drawn to the noblest and craziest of professions, and an uplifting reminder of the virtues and dangers of political life.
Fire and Ashes, by Michael Ignatieff
Intellectuals cannot help themselves. They look at the clowns and dimwits giving speeches on the stump and think I could do better. Take Michael Ignatieff, who briefly left behind his life as a Harvard professor and journalist to become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. In 2011, at age 64, he ran for prime minister and led his party to its worst defeat since its founding in 1867. In his memoir of his short political career, Fire and Ashes, he writes about the humiliation he suffered during the campaign. In a spirit of self-deprecation, the trail, and his own disastrous performance there. (The book’s best sections are those that describe the confusing humiliations of returning to everyday life after leaving politics: going to the dry cleaners, driving your own car. ) In the process of losing, Ignatieff gained a deep new respect for this gritty business. Politics and all the nose counting, horse trading, and baby kissing that goes with it. His defeat is a kind of redemption, forcing him to appreciate the rituals of political mission that he once dismissed as mundane.
Written by Michael Ignatieff
“Witness” by Whittaker Chambers
Published in 1952, this memoir remains in the hands of up-and-coming young conservatives as a means of indoctrinating them into the movement. Witness, published in the year 2000, when the American right was beginning to emerge into the modern era, was a conservative paper, cloaked in apocalyptic rhetoric about the fight for humanity’s future; This style contributed to the establishment of the Manichean mentality of postwar conservatism. But this book is more than just an example of perspective; it tells a series of epic stories. Chambers tells a fascinating tale of subterfuge, recounting his time as an underground communist activist in the 1930s. A longer section of the book is devoted to one of the great spectacles of modern American politics: the Alger Hiss affair. In 1948, after defecting from his sect, Chambers gave shocking testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, accusing Hiss, a former State Department official and model liberal figure, of being a Soviet spy. Ta. History has vindicated Chambers’ version of events, and his propulsive storytelling stands the test of time.
My Life So Far, by Betty Friedan
Humans have a deep yearning to canonize political heroes as saints. But many successful activists are unpleasant people, and in fact they are often troublesome. No one did more to popularize the cause of feminism in the 1960s than Friedan, but her methods consisted of stubborn brute force and an unstinting belief in her own righteousness. Her memoir is both a disturbing account of her marriage to an abusive man and the inside story of founding the National Organization for Women. Friedan’s engaging and self-aware prose provides a window into how feminist ideas were translated into an agenda, albeit sometimes self-defeating, of one of America’s most effective reformers. You can look inside your head.
Palimpsest by Gore Vidal
Vidal wrote some of America’s greatest novels about politics. “Burr” “Lincoln” 1876. In this epic and vicious memoir, he trains himself on that political acumen. He was able to write so vividly about the salons, cloakrooms, and dark hallways of Washington because he extracted texture, color, and understanding from his own life. His grandfather was Oklahoma State Senator TP Gore. Jacqueline Onassis is his relative by marriage, and he writes about growing up with her on the banks of the Potomac River. And although he freely admits that for years he harbored fantasies that he, too, might become a great politician, he ran for Congress in 1960, then ran for Congress in 1982. He ran for Senate, but was defeated. To say the least, Vidal did not have the temperament of a politician. Lived in feud. Robert F. Kennedy became Vidal’s nemesis after he forced him out of the White House for embarrassing displays of drunkenness. William F. Buckley, whom Vidal debated live in prime time at the 1968 political convention, was also a hated rival. Critic Jon Rahr once said, “No one gets angry from on high like Vidal,” and this is a journey of the heart filled with schadenfreude, hauteurism, and an abiding love of politics. It’s an almost perfect advertising phrase to describe it.
This Child Will Be Great, by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Defeat made Ignatiev understand the nobility of politics. The life of Liberia’s Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president – the clichéd “Iron Lady of Africa” – is a close embodiment of that ideal. She led Liberia after suffering under the terrible rule of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, who ruled the country corruptly. Taylor is notorious for organizing an army of child soldiers and using rape as a weapon. As a leader of the opposition against these tyrants, Sirleaf survived imprisonment, exile, and an abusive husband. She narrowly escaped execution by firing squad. Although her writing style is modest and sometimes erratic—she is an economist by training—her memoirs contain a complex and tragic story of a nation that she describes as a “complexity.” “It’s a difficult problem wrapped in paradox,” he says. (Indeed, the story is a damning indictment of American foreign policy.) Her biography is a shocking and urgently useful example of tenacity in the face of despair.
Cold Cream by Ferdinand Mount
Only a small portion of this hilarious and sumptuous memoir is about politics, but it’s so much fun that it deserves a spot on this list. Like Vidal and Igantiev, Mount is an intellectual who tried his hand at electoral politics. But he had his flaws when he stood for the British Parliament as a Conservative. He spoke “in a languid way that gave away too clearly my inner nervousness…I found myself overcome with boredom when I heard my own voice.” This sudden dislike Even with practice, the feeling of boredom, close to feeling, did not go away. ” A few years later, he appeared as Margaret Thatcher’s speechwriter and her chief policy adviser. His ironic sensibility is a major source of pleasure as he chronicles life at 10 Downing Street. His description of Thatcher, particularly her inability to read social cues, is mixed with his admiration for her leadership and ideological zeal. There are shelves of gossip books written by close aides. My favorite is the way Mount speaks bitterly about his mission in the Inner Sanctuary.
Written by Ferdinand Mount
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