What It Takes

"This is about the 1988 presidential campaign and is one of the great political books. Cramer was a Yale classmate of George H Bush and so had better access again to the family. It’s really about the father, about George H, and George W plays only a small role, but it has very revelatory scenes in it showing how George W was acting out and was the troublemaker and the reckless one, the black sheep, and how the rest of the family dealt with it. In 1986 George H was trying to get his campaign started and it’s about how people reacted to him and about Prescott Bush, his father, and the sense of this political family dynasty. It’s a great read and he tells the story of the rise of George H better than anyone else has ever told it."

"This account of the ’88 presidential campaign is my all-time favorite campaign book. Richard Ben Cramer was a brilliant observer and writer. Full disclosure, I appear on one page of this 700-page book, as a bit player on Biden’s campaign. Many people who know Joe Biden did not like the way he was portrayed in this book, and I certainly don’t agree with all of it. What it Takes is unvarnished; it really shows you the intertwining politics and personalities of the participants in a campaign which had open, competitive primary races on both sides. The book portrays three Democrats and three Republicans. It’s a fascinating read. When he entered the race for the election of ‘88, he was a very young candidate in a very competitive field, which included Governor Michael Dukakis (who became the nominee), Al Gore (who become Vice President in ‘93), Dick Gephardt (who became the leader of the Democrats in the House), and Reverend Jesse Jackson, the first African American to win a presidential primary. It was a field packed with political talent. “Joe Biden had to balance the future of the Court and the Constitution against his campaign” As this campaign was starting, Justice Powell resigned from the Supreme Court and Joe Biden, as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had to balance the future of the Court and the Constitution against his campaign. In the middle of all that, he gave a speech in Iowa where he didn’t attribute remarks from Neil Kinnock that he had attributed on many previous occasions. He decided to drop out of the primary and even offered to step aside as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He ran twice before. He dropped out of ’88 race in the summer of ’87, before any caucuses were held, after a couple of months. And he dropped out of the 2008 race after he was defeated in the first caucus."