It occurred to me, after I read Instapundit’s post here, that the practice in recent years of political candidates flacking ghostwritten autobiographies as part of their campaigns is really horribly unseemly.
I honestly don’t care about a potential president’s childhood or his college experience or that church mission to Tibet that s/he went on in high school. I don’t care about what prestigious university they went to or how they met their wife or what prompted them to get into politics.
If I have to read a 400-page tome dripping with syrupy prose meant to sway my emotions such that my vote is also swayed, I’ll save my money and buy more SF.
I think I realized this after I got about ten pages into Sarah Palin’s book some years back and realized that I didn’t care. And that’s saying something given that I’m trained as an historian.
But I think what really blew political autobiography out of the water for me was our current President, who had not one but two such books written before he ever ran for the office.
Why can’t we go back to the days when we elected a politician based on what we could suss out about his political philosophy and his plans for governing us based on what he told us from the stump? Or if he was a governor or a mayor or even a senator, what did he do in those positions that gives him credibility for the Big Job? Spare me the stories about youth and all that shit. Tell me what you’re going to do if elected and why I should believe what you’re telling me about that.
I still love the story about William McKinley running his 1896 campaign from his front porch. Tell us what you’re going to do, then shove off and we’ll get back to you. And for Christ’s sake, stop killing trees with your poorly-written paeans of glory to yourselves.