Road Show: In America, Anyone Can Become President, It's One of the Risks We Take

by Roger Simon

The irreverent columnist for "The Baltimore Sun" follows the 1988 presidential campaign trail from Iowa to New York and tells what the contest revealed about American values and aspirations

356 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a junkie for books about presidential campaigns, all the way from Theodore White's stately THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series through last year's tabloid eyebrows-raiser GAME CHANGE. (The best of these, to my mind, is Richard Ben Cramer's monolithic WHAT IT TAKES.) ROAD SHOW is a classic of the genre. I found my copy when I was rearranging some shelves and promptly lost the rest of the day. The prime characters in this overview of the 1988 campaign are George (not-W) Bush, Dan Quayle, Michael (never Mike) Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, the Icarus of politics, Gary Hart, whose bad judgment wouldn't be equaled for decades, but who looks like a little Puritan child beside John Edwards) --- and the long, long shadow of Ronald Reagan. What's not to love? I wish Simon had stayed with the campaign books -- I'd have loved to have had his thoughts on the Clinton and W elections.