Henrietta Hay's Column

The latest work by that very prolific author, Anonymous, is called Primary Colors. And it is currently the number one best seller nationwide. It has been reviewed so much that it is hardly necessary to read the book. Everybody in Washington is trying to figure out who wrote it. As one of them said, it's so good I wish I had. One thing all the reviewers agree on; it is a superb novel.

Primary Colors, a Novel of Politics is about the 1994 primary campaign of the young governor of a small southern state who wants to be President. Those who are in the know say that it is so accurate than no outsider could have written it. That turns it into a new genre: novel/biography/political treatise, and makes it hard for the reader to know for sure what to believe.

The narrator, Henry Burton, is certainly George Stephanopoulus, whom Anonymous disguised a little by giving him a black father and a white mother. His idol, Jack Stanton completely dominates the book. Stanton, as we all know by now, is Bill Clinton and Susan is his wife.

The action concerns the way presidential campaigns are run, and it's not a pretty picture. There was a time when politicians sat around in smoke filled rooms and made decisions. Now candidates and their staffs work all night in hotel rooms and on trains or buses or planes. They live on pizza and danish and coffee and diet coke and very little sleep.

They analyze every TV bite from the opposition, and plan a response. They fight over whether to go positive or negative in the next day's campaign. Every word, every move of the other guy is analyzed, and the next day's speeches, statements and press releases are planned for maximum political effect.

Their every move is followed by the scorps, short for scorpions, their not too affectionate term for the media, with whom they have a true love/hate relationship. They have to have 'em, but they hate 'em.

In the heat of the campaign there is no room for statesmanship or vision -- only sound bites. I suspect that this is a universal description of all modern campaigns, and it does not speak well for our collective future. The book describes in gory detail the appalling toll presidential campaigns exact from candidates.

But it is the characters who make the book fascinating to a political junkie like me. I expected it to be a blistering criticism of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Actually, it is more nearly an argument for the Clinton presidency. The character of Jack Stanton dominates the book, a man with flaws and appetites, but a man who really cares, who thinks he can make a difference.

Henry Burden was completely captivated from the very first moment he saw him in action. Jack "...was in his heavy listening mode, the most aggressive listening the world has ever known . . .Gradually I came to see how he devoured every aspect of public life . . .It was. . . something like the way a hawk sees the ground--every insect, every blade of grass is distinct, yet kept in perspective."

Stanton is vision-oriented, interested in the grand design. Susan is task-oriented, a problem-solver. We see them moving as a team from the idealism of the sixties college generation to the hard, painful, gritty realities of public life - and surviving. His mistakes are there for all to see, but so is his great enthusiasm for being with people, for caring about them. He is happiest when he can get out and work the street and listen to everyone on it.

As fiction, it is a fascinating book, full of action and live, interesting characters. As a commentary on modern American politics it makes us wonder how any human person can survive the battle for the presidency - or would want to.

As for me, I would rather have a flawed president who truly cares and who still believes he can make a difference in lives, than a flawed president who cares only about his own power.

But then, it's only fiction.