Frank Boles
Within the Clarke Historical Library is a group of books
particularly relevant every four years, on Election Day. The Presidential
Campaign Biography Collection was begun in 1964 to document how presidential
candidates portrayed themselves and how they were portrayed in print. The object
was to document the continuities and the changes in the origin stories and
values candidates believed would resonate with the American public (or persuade
voters to vote against someone). The collection is in a very real sense a
mirror, reflecting how politicians perceived what personal characteristics and
values the public wanted, or did not want, in a president.
During the current presidential campaign, additions to the
collection began in the last days of 2019 and the spring of 2020. Many of the
Democratic Party presidential hopefuls issued, or re-issued books they authored,
such as:
- Joe Biden. Promise Me Dad: A year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose.
- Corey Booker. United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.
- Pete Buttigieg. Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future.
- Kamala Harris. The Truths We Hold; An American Journey.
- Amy Klobuchar. The Senator Next Door: A Memoir for the Heartland.
- Bernie Sanders. Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance.
- Elizabeth Warren. This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class.
The point of each book was to give primary voters a way to
differentiate one candidate from another. These books reflect the best in American
politics – the fundamental democratic belief that candidates should articulate
values and objectives, and that voters care about the life and ideas of a
candidate and will take the time to
educate themselves on these matters before they cast their ballot. The heart of
a democracy is found in these sometimes slender, and often well illustrated,
volumes.
As is frequently the case when a party has an incumbent
president in the White House, the Republican Party primary season generated
very few publications. Everyone knew who the Republican presidential nominee
was going to be. However, once the two major parties had selected their respective
nominees, the Republican silence ended. As the campaign season began, so too
did the war of words about the candidates.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden quickly found themselves
praised and panned in print. Praise came from authors like Conrad Black, A
President Like No Other: Donald J. Trump and the Restoring of America, which
was matched by David Hagan, No Ordinary Joe: The Life and Career of Joe
Biden. Pans of Biden came from books such as Branko Marcetic, Yesterday’s
Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. But anti-Biden titles paled against several
critical tell-all books about Trump, such as John Bolton, The Room Where It
Happened: a White House Memoir, Michael Cohen, Disloyal: A Memoir: The
True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, or
Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s
Most Dangerous Man.
These books also say interesting things about democracy in
America. If a candidate’s own publication is often high-minded and issue-oriented,
these books often are neither. In some, a candidate can walk on water. In
others, the same person is vilified and abused.
Tell-all books published just before an election are a
particularly important sub-genre of presidential biography. Their objectivity
is often subject to question. They can, for example, be an unsubtle way to
settle an old score. Tell-alls also sell very well just before an election, and
more than one author has cashed in on that fact, even if the tell-all they
penned didn’t tell very much at all. For all their potential shortcomings, the
authors are usually people who were at the right place at the right time to make
important observations about the candidate.
Around the edges of these often interesting but also
sometimes suspect books are volumes making much more extreme claims. Perris
Jackson’s Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: Two People within the USA Government
Who Are Laboring to Destroy the USA Constitution and Replace it with an NWO
Government Which “They” Already Created Within China lays out a deeply
conspiratorial view of Biden and Harris, but it is kinder to them than Lawrence
R. Moelhauser is to the president in The Fourth Beast: Is Donald Trump the
Anti-Christ?
Some would dismiss the fringe biographical literature as
unimportant. There are not a significant number of voters who believe Joe Biden
is scheming to create a New World Government based on a Chinese model or that
Donald Trump is the anti-Christ. But voters can be placed on a spectrum of
ideas and opinions, which moves over time one way or another. Fringe literature
describing a candidate, although it often has little immediate impact, can
exercise a subtle pull in one direction, or, conversely can create a revulsion
that moves the electorate in the opposite way. If the fringe biographical
literature often plays to America’s deepest fears, it also can arouse an
opposition based on the nation’s noblest instincts. It is important, even if it
is, on the face of it, very unbelievable.
Campaign biographies date back to the 1820s, when the genre
as we understand it today was invented by the campaign of Andrew Jackson.
Jackson was a polarizing figure with a serous image problem. His campaign tried
to quiet criticism with titles such as, An Impartial and True History of the
Life and Services of Major General Andrew Jackson. The book was neither
impartial nor necessarily true, but it was favorable. When criticism continued
to come, Jackson’s campaign addressed their opponent’s literature with titles
such as Henry Lee’s A Vindication of the Character and Public Services of
Andrew Jackson: In Reply to the Richmond Address Signed by Chapman Johnson and
other Electioneering Calumnies.
In the days since Andrew Jackson’s presidency, candidates
have continued to be praised and panned in print. The Presidential Campaign
Biography collections defines what the American people believed about the
candidates for president. Those beliefs may be based in fact, spin, or fiction,
but they are the beliefs that selected the president of the United States.
Begun by a gift from the CMU Class of 1964, today it is
supported by a small endowment. If you would like to help the collection grow,
we welcome gifts of 2020 presidential campaign literature or political
literature from earlier presidential contests. In addition to literature from
the two major parties, we also collect biographical material about third-party
candidates, although we use a threshold of a candidate obtaining one percent of
the total national presidential vote to distinguish a “serous” third-party
effort that we try to document from truly fringe candidates.
We also welcome financial gifts to support the endowment for
our quadrennial presidential “buying spree” as well as the purchase of
important relevant items that appear in between presidential elections.
