The New York Post's Page Six, home to gossip about wanna-be celebrities and their cousins, the actually famous, disclosed today that First Lady Laura Bush is negotiating with publishers who are bidding on her memoirs. As one literary agent told the Post, "The publishers are coming to the White House to meet with her and discuss the book."
President Bush, by contrast, is said to be waiting before pitching his memoirs. With an approval rating at historic lows, the president apparently thinks he should wait five years before approaching publishers. One agent, Mort Janklow, asked how long Bush should wait, quipped, "30 or 40 years might be good." In the meantime, the more popular first lady -- a former teacher, librarian and a published author -- may serve up a more palatable version of the Bush 43 White House, say literary agents.
The Blairs pioneered this strategy and it is a great way of testing the waters. Mrs. Bush is clearly a lot more popular than her husband at the moment and this is a way of serving up a story in a way that is palatable to the public. Longer term, I am sure we will also see a book from her husband and this of course allows for two bites of the cherry. Commercially, it makes great sense. Also, of course, the public tend to mellow in their attitude to even the most hated political leaders over time.
No word yet on the size of the advance, but you can start counting those zeroes. Bill Clinton made $30 million from sales of his "My Life" and his "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World." Former First Lady, now New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, got $8 million for "Living History."
The Washington Post investigative reporter, with colleague Carl Bernstein, helped unravel the mysteries and criminalities of Watergate. Before it was over, President Nixon had resigned and Woodward and Bernstein had authored their first bestseller: "All the President's Men."
Bernstein left the paper soon after, to pursue television and Hollywood and other forms of fame. Woodward stayed on, rising through the ranks of the Post hierarchy. These days he's the newspaper's associate editor.
And he kept writing books. Most of them were behind-the-curtain looks at whatever administration was then occupying the White House. (Our favorite was "Veil," which included a deathbed interview with CIA Director William Casey that no one else witnessed.) Most of the books have been embarrassing to the administration in question. And most came with $1-million advances.
Woodward's latest opus, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008" comes out next week. Based on interviews with Bush insiders, it reveals, as Countdown to Crawford reported here yesterday, that the Bush White House has been spying on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
The temptation to help write the first draft of history, Woodward-style, must be enormous. But really, why would any White House cooperate?
Bob Woodward is at it again. The White House and the rest of us can get set for the whirlwind.
And if President Bush doesn't like the way he comes off, he can blame the guy who works down the hall, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley.
The prolific author of Watergate fame is about to publish his fourth volume on the history of the Bush administration, and the publisher says it "declassifies the secrets of America's political and military involvement in Iraq."
White House officials, according to Politico.com, hope it will reflect "more favorably on Bush" than Woodward's earlier "State of Denial."
After all, it covers the final three years of the administration -- a period that includes the "surge" in Iraq, to which officials seem to unanimously point as a sign of success after the deluge of bad news leading up to 2007.
The report says Woodward, a Washington Post editor, gained the cooperation of a wide range of administration officials, who were encouraged by Hadley to cooperate.
Among those who sat down for Woodward interviews, Politico reports: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and, of course, the president. Twice.
There's not much planned in the way of a roll out -- only lengthy, juicy excerpts in the Post itself the day before publication and an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" the night before publication.
It was supposed to be a forum for former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to dish Karl Rove, or maybe Vice President Dick Cheney in the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
But in the opening moments of today's House Judiciary Committee hearings, McClellan got slammed by Republican Lamar Smith of Texas, who questioned whether McClellan's book was actually written by his editor, Karl Weber, who, he said, has called President Bush "a clearly horrible person."
Public Affairs, which published McClellan's book "What Happened," said the comment came not from Weber but from his daughter.
Smith also suggested McClellan wrote the book to 1) make money and 2) get back at those in the White House who fired him. "While we may never know the answers, Scott McClellan alone will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the president and his friends for a few pieces of silver."
Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, defended McClellan, saying "character assassination" has no place in the Judiciary Committee.
Then the committee recessed, so members could go vote on a wiretapping law. When they get back you can watch the hearing here or follow updates at latimes.com here.
Laura Bush, a former teacher and librarian, toured the Charles Dickens House and Museum in London today, lamenting that many Americans are now aliterate -- they are able to read but choose not to.
"They work on a computer or they watch television," she said. "And it will be a huge loss for all of us if we don't read our literature, because that's how our ideas and our values are transmitted from generation to generation."
The first lady toured the home in Bloomsbury where Dickens lived from 1812 to 1876. According to London's Guardian, she chatted briefly with the author's great-great-great-granddaughter, Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and inspected a battered journal Dickens kept during his travels to the United States.
"It's so important for us as English-speaking people to be aware of what our literature is," she said.
The Bushes on are on what is being billed as their last White House trek to Europe, returning home to Washington tonight.
When President Bush was popular and his remaining time in office long, congressional Republicans were quick to jump to his defense. Now, with his approval ratings in the tank and his remaining term measured in months, they are hugging to their seats.
When former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book came out, their was silence from the president's putative Republican allies. OK, so Congress is in recess. But when Bush was popular, GOP lawmakers would rush to TV studios and send out mass e-mails to defend the president, even if they were on remote Pacific islands.
Democrats, of course, are ready to pounce. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he has instructed his staff to begin discussions with McClellan to determine whether the committee should hold a hearing on revelations in the book about attempts to cover-up the Valerie Plame leak.
Finally, a Republican piped up. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the panel's top Republican, said: “While I’m sure Mr. McClellan's publishers would want nothing more than some free publicity from Judiciary Committee Democrats, we have more important things to do on this committee than investigate the unfounded allegations of a disgruntled former employee. This is a book about personal opinions, not facts. And it's no surprise that the liberal publisher has chosen to promote outrageous statements as part of a political smear campaign to grab headlines and sell books. It should not take a congressional hearing to determine that Mr. McClellan's statements are not credible.”
Bush loyalists, outraged by Scott McClellan's disloyalty, are taking comfort from the inevitable fallout. Scott's newfound friends on the left, they muse, will drop him as soon as it's convenient. And while his book may earn him a lot of money, he'll never work in Washington political circles again.
Maybe, but if history is any guide, he may find safe haven in New York financial or media circuits instead.
Remember George Stephanopoulos? In 1999 he wrote "All Too Human," an insider tell-all about Bill and Hillary Clinton. These days he's anchor of ABC's "This Week" Sunday talk show.
Then there was David Stockman's "The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed." President Reagan took his OMB director to the "woodshed" over the book (maybe the title?) but afterwards Stockman had a nice run on Wall Street. (Until recently when he was indicted in a fraud case.)
And of course there's Dick Morris, who wrote "Behind the Oval Office" about his efforts to teach Clinton how to triangulate. After a brief period of censure for having a long-term relationship with a prostitute, Morris was back on the lecture circuit, practically making a living off analyzing the Clintons.
So if dissing a president doesn't destroy a career, if there's no downside to disclosure, what's a White House to do? Loyalty oaths sort of went out with the Joe McCarthy witch hunt era. As for civility well, let's not even go there. I thought Tim Russert put it nicely the other morning on the Today Show when he said, "Beware of the quiet guy standing in the corner of the room."
When Mike Allen of the Politico broke the story of Scott McClellan's new kiss-and-tell book Tuesday night, he explained that he just happened to spot the epistle while browsing at a local bookstore.
Then reporters for other newspapers, who already had the book, began dishing from its pages. Some of them explained that they too just happened to spot it on the shelves.
So remarkable was the coincidence that Neal Conan, on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" Wednesday, asked Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal when she had acquired the book.
CONAN: When did you actually get a copy of this book?
Ms. RADNOFSKY: Late last night. I was on my way home.
CONAN: And you just happened to see it in a bookstore?
Ms. RADNOFSKY: Yes, on sale in a Washington bookstore.
Ms. Radnofsky emailed me that she actually did see the book in a local shop, and has the receipt to prove it.
But let's cut to the chase here. We are living in an era when book publishers make deals with news organizations to control the media rollout for a hot book. They give you an advance copy so you can actually read the tome, but dictate when you can write about it. Reporters who get itchy for a scoop and decide to break the embargo? Yes, you got it, they saw it on the shelves at the local bookshop!
Maybe Mike Allen did, as he said, just happen upon it. For the rest of us, enough of the hypocrisy. End the shellgame. Please, my colleagues, come clean. Otherwise you'll have to endure more embarassing moments like this one, when NPR's Conan sounded a note of incredulity over the whole affair.
CONAN: Louise Radnofsky, you and reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico, the website, all happen to come across it in bookstores here in Washington last night?
Ms. RADNOFSKY: I didn't know if it was the same bookstore, but yes.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
