Politician

The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down by Andrew Young

That long title you just read is the best part of this account.   Trust me on this.   You should only read this book if you love sleazy things.   In fact, you should only read it if you’d jump into a 400 gallon vat of sleaze, if such a thing existed.

“…I had time to reflect on my experience with a most charismatic and deceptive politician and the factors that made me vulnerable to his spell.”

Sigh.   Vulnerable to the spells and charms of John Edwards?   Yes, that’s how tacky this true tale is.   The author is John Edwards’ well-educated aide (we know he’s well educated because he tells us so several times throughout the account), who assisted him at almost every step of his public and private deceptions.   This Andrew Young – a law school graduate and not the civil rights leader – told the media that he was the father of the child that Edwards had with his mistress.   Young then suffered mightily having to live with Edwards’ mistress in a $20,000 per month rental mega-mansion in Montecito – which is the Ritziest part of Santa Barbara County.   Sad, isn’t it?   Such virtually unimaginable suffering.

And how did Edwards acquire the funds to support the mistress and Young and his family?   By telling heiress Bunny Mellon that they were using her millions to fund a poverty center based at the University of North Carolina.   See what I mean about the sleaze?

What we do know is that the author told lies on his master’s behalf for months and years, and in order to believe the truthfulness of this account, you would have to believe that he’s telling “the truth and nothing but the truth” now.   Uh, huh.   Right.

“Barring a sudden surge of honesty, the only way we were going to get out of our commitment would be if Mrs. Edwards died.”

Nobody comes off well in this account, not Young, not Edwards – which is hardly a surprise – and certainly not Elizabeth Edwards.   In fact, Young’s primary agenda here seems to be trashing her reputation.   Elizabeth is portrayed not as a spurned and loyal woman who was admired by millions of Americans, stricken by disease, but as a…   Well, I don’t need to say it.

I did appreciate one matter substantiated by Young, that Mr. Edwards sought to pattern himself after Robert Kennedy, but his act always seemed – to me – like a very bad actor’s version of RFK (left hand in jacket pocket, right hand stroking the air, combing his hair or fixing his tie).   At one point, Edwards goes on a retreat and Young notices that every one of the books that our once self-anointed president-in-training took with him was either written by Robert Kennedy or was about RFK.   But then Young gets some very basic things wrong.   For example, at one point someone refers to Edwards as the Robert Redford of politics, and Young writes that the reference was to Redford as The Natural.   Not at all, the reference was to Redford in the film The Candidate, about the photogenic candidate who gets elected to the U. S. Senate and then asks the question of his staff, “What do we do now?”   The comment was likely meant to depict Edwards as an empty suit.

As the son of a preacher man, Young never gets around to identifying the message in this sad morality play.   And it’s a play that has not finished its run yet (Is Edwards going to marry his mistress and the mother of his baby?   Will he be charged with crimes?).   But let’s be clear about this…  This account by Andrew Young is not in any way equivalent to John Dean’s Blind Faith.   Young is no hero.   John Dean helped to rid the country of a cancer on the presidency.   Young did his best, his very best, to put John Edwards in the White House.

Not recommended.

Review by Joseph Arellano.   This book was purchased by the reviewer, unfortunately.

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A Must to Avoid

The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account by Maria Bartiromo with Catherine Whitney (Portfolio; $26.95; 232 pages)

There are a number of very good books dealing with the financial crisis that struck Wall Street and this country beginning in September of 2008.   This is not one of them.   In fact, like the title of the song by Herman’s Hermits, this one’s A Must to Avoid.

Firstly, it’s not really an eyewitness account.   Unlike the accounts in which the writer was an earlier participant in the events, Bartiromo does not claim to have been present in the financial firm board rooms as things melted down.   Instead, she appears to rely on the other accounts previously written adding only a few quotes from on-air interviews she conducted between 2008 and 2010.

Secondly, there are only 208 actual pages of content here, which is awfully skimpy for a $27.00 hardbound release.   Although Bartiromo was not present at the center of the financial action, she was apparently present at a number of grand parties involving Wall Street wizards who could spend money like there was no tomorrow (but tomorrow wound up coming early).   Which brings us to the key problem with this flimsy account…  When it comes to choosing between the folks on Main Street – good, hardworking Americans and small businessmen and women – and the princes on Wall Street, Bartiromo makes clear that she’s on the side of the multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Early on, Bartiromo explains to the reader that she married into a very wealthy New York City family, with an apartment on Park Avenue, and this sets the stage for her very biased view in this tale.   She claims that the U. S. media developed a “simplistic narrative of working class heroes versus fat-cat villains.”   Only this wasn’t a simplistic narrative, it was reality.   She herself describes men like Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch who got paid $150 million for leaving the firm “even though he ruined the company.”   (It turns out that O’Neal was underpaid compared to other Wall Street executives who received far more hundreds of millions once they were sacked.)

Surprisingly and rather shockingly, Bartiromo goes further with this craziness asking us to feel sorry for one Lehman Brothers executive who made $14 million in one year, then was reduced to a measly $1 million in take home pay the next year.   This, Miss Maria finds to be horrible and virtually incomprehensible.   No  matter that the gentleman in question was hardly forced to go on food stamps or eat in food kitchens.   No, the rich must live in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed, according to this account.

Just to show that I’m not taking things out of context, here are the actual words she uses to draw our tearful sympathy:

“Many (Wall Street executives) were experiencing tremendous anger and grief.   In some cases, it was the wives who were most deeply affected.   They went from being at the top of the social register, with galas and benefits filling their calendars, to being on the outside, embarrassed to show their faces.   One insider observed to me, ‘When the wealthy falter, there is deep shame on a level that the average person cannot grasp.   In that world, you’re either in or you’re not.   It’s not the same as losing a job in a middle class neighborhood, where your friends and neighbors are likely to rally around you.   When you lose your job at the top, they cut you dead.’ “

Excuse me, but what nonsense.   This is offensive to “average” hardworking American citizens, like those that buy and read most of the books in this nation.   Who is Maria Bartiromo writing for – Mrs. and Mrs. Donald Trump?

Although Bartiromo’s writing assistant, Catherine Whitney, has her name listed on the book’s cover, this does not mean the book is well-edited.   Instead, the book is littered with odd grammar.   For example, “Merrill seemed more like a winner than a loser.   We had to look at the entities that may still fall in the coming weeks and months…”   Perhaps they meant to write that they had to look at the entities that might fall in the coming weeks and months.

Clearly, this one is not recommended but there are other alternatives to consider.   For an exciting “fly on the wall” telling, try Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street by Kate Kelly.   Then there’s the recommended A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson.   And if you don’t mind an overly long, rambling and maddeningly detailed version of these events there’s On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry W. (Hank) Paulson, Jr.   Any one of these accounts is one hundred times better – and far less patronizing – than Bartiromo’s slight “eyewitness account”.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was received from the publisher.

Our Book Ratings System

As you may notice in visiting this site, we do not rank or score books with letter grades or numbers or stars – either white or gold ones.   We simply recommend books, of whatever genre, or do not recommend them.   The most precious resource we have in life is time, and so we attempt to make a determination here as to whether a particular book is worth your time.

If you don’t see a recommendation at the end of the review, the book in question is not recommended.   When we do recommend a book it will fall into one of three categories, as follows.

Recommended – This is a book, fiction or non-fiction, which may contain up to four or five writing flaws which were not corrected in the editing process.   However, it is clear on the whole (and by a margin that clearly exceeds 51%) that this is a book that will justify the time you devote to it.

Well Recommended – A book in this category may contain two or three flaws or editing omissions, but it’s exemplary and likely to rank in the top quartile (top 25%) of books on the market.

Highly Recommended – Books like these are likely in the top 10% of those released in the current and prior calendar year.   They may contain one or two errors but are nevertheless close to perfection in both content and presentation.

Some books will fall into the Recommended or Well Recommended category because they are well written, but Highly Recommended books tend to require a junction of great writing with a great theme and near-flawless execution.   Finally, we are considering adding a new category, Essential.   Essential books are novels or non-fiction books released in prior years that should be a part of any well-rounded reader’s experience.   Two examples that immediately come to mind are In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and Independence Day by Richard Ford.   The latter was the winner of both The Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.   (“It is difficult to imagine a better American novel appearing this year.”   Publishers Weekly, 1995)

Independence Day was reviewed on this site on October 30, 2009 (“American Tune”).

No Icing on This Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender (Doubleday, $25.95)

“I wondered what he knew about the family; what he didn’t know.   What family he lived in.   My mind wandered around.”

This novel begins with a charming and unique premise.   A young girl, Rose Edelstein, finds that by eating food prepared by others she can taste (experience) the moods and feelings of the preparers.   This has particular relevance when it comes to her mother’s sadness, but later her guilt.   Her mother is having an affair, the knowledge of which Rose wishes she did not possess.

“The guilt in the beef had been like a vector pointing in one direction…  I hated it; the whole thing was like reading her diary against my will.   Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life…  I didn’t appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.”

This discomfort on the part of our protagonist also affects the reader; at least, it affected this reader.   Rose has been given a power she does not want and it makes  her life messy and unpleasant.   At one point, early in the story, she is hospitalized after raving about wanting to get rid of her mouth.   If she didn’t have her mouth in her face, she wouldn’t have to eat and wouldn’t have to feel what others are feeling.

“Over the course of several packed days, I’d tasted my mother’s affairs and had (a) conversation with my father…  I was not feeling good about any of it…”

Rose has a boring attorney father, a brother who isolates and who is soon departing for college, and an unhappy mother who regularly disappears for a couple of hours of errands – which is when she meets her lover.   She lives in a household of people who hardly communicate; people who regularly ask questions of each other that go unanswered.   This also applies to others in Rose’s life.   For example, she asks her Spanish teacher, “How was your weekend?” before her instructor turns away and walks off to roam the aisles of the junior high school classroom.

Aimee Bender’s writing style is clipped; words often appear to be missing from sentences, from paragraphs, from pages.   Maybe the words are missing because, in this imaginary world, humans simply don’t understand each other – relatives or strangers – and therefore, are not competent about talking, listening, responding.   Perhaps the oddest of all things is that this story is not set in an isolated small town (Mayberry, if you will).   No, it is set in an earlier day Los Angeles, where mega communication was already the order of the day.

There must be an intended message buried somewhere in this 292-page novel that I missed.   After its charming opening pages, Lemon Cake seemed to immediately bog down.   It read more like a novella or an overly extended short story than a true novel.

Perhaps I just don’t have the taste for this recipe.   Lemon Cake left me feeling empty and sad and confused and hungry for something with some heft.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Do Not Enter

Based Upon Availability: A Novel by Alix Strauss (Harper Paperbacks, 340 pages, $13.99)

“Living with a ghost is easier than living alone.”

If the idea of reading about the fictional lives of eight highly dysfunctional and miserable women makes you giddy with excitement, you might like Based Upon Availability.   This novel by Alix Strauss (The Joy of Funerals, Death Becomes Them) allows one to wallow in misery.   The chief protagonist Morgan, the manager at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, would seem to have it made.   But she’s never gotten over the loss of her younger sister, so she does some very strange things – like having sex with the lowest paid males who work for her and entering the rooms of guests while they’re away.

Oh, yes, we meet the other women – all of whom have big troubles – when Morgan goes inside their room.   That’s the signal that another sad story is about to play out.   It is actually quite a shame because Strauss can write well, “Bernie sounds like a beagle that never comes when you call…  (a man) wearing a golf hat who plays cards with his cronies in Florida.”   But the sex scenes are beyond redemption.   Morgan whispers to her latest conquest so that she can pretend “like (she’s) in a porn video.”

All in all, this is a sad collection of stories which portray life as nothing more than simple torture.

Reprinted courtesy of Sacramento Book Review.