On a Book I Haven't Read -- Yet

Yesterday morning, I was made aware of a book released, or to be released, this month.  It is called "Shattered", and I have no idea who the author is, because I heard the name once, didn't recognize it, and turned my attention to the content rather than the writer.

OK, there are two authors, Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen.  I figured you might want to know, and it seemed pretty silly not to look it up.  Still haven't heard of either one, but it doesn't really matter.

"Shattered" is an inside look at the disastrous campaign run by Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she blew an immensely winnable election against Donald Trump despite having polled ahead for, well, the entire campaign.  Hillary Clinton never trailed in the polls, all the way through the exit polls on the day of the election.

She arguably won all three debates, even though after the first one, it was very clear how now-President Trump conducted himself during debates.  How easily, it seemed, it would have been for her to look presidential by comparison, if only she could have looked 80% less pompous than she indeed did.

What I actually got to thinking, after I decided that I really wanted to pick up that book sometime, was that I saw something very interesting in an inside exposé of that campaign.  It had not only failed, but it had failed spectacularly, and reading about that would be fun.

But more than that, I thought about whether or not I would have wanted to read a comparable book about the Trump campaign, which had its own issues, at least until Kellyanne Conway took over its leadership.  The more I thought about it, the more I said "Well, not really."

I mean, sure, his campaign was sort of interesting, but reading a book is a commitment, and it (his campaign) wasn't all that interesting a subject.  And that was the one I voted for.  But it struck me that I didn't expect to learn anything I really cared about.  We have known both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for decades, but how much did we really learn about Trump from the campaign that we didn't already know or suspect?

Is there much mystery about the president?  We know he was a businessman, very successful, three wives, plenty of female company over the years, outspoken and very, very New York.  If anything, we learned during the campaign that he was a marvelous father to his five kids, and they had turned out to be remarkable and successful, well-adjusted people.  What would the details of the campaign actually tell us that either we didn't already know, or cleared up a mystery enough to write a book on.

Plus, Trump won.  Whatever might have gone wrong in his campaign, the outcome was a success, and failure is much more fun to read about.  But failed campaigns are not in and of themselves interesting.  I wouldn't want to read about the presidential campaigns of the dull John Kerry, or the duller Al Gore.  John McCain?  That campaign was doomed by race (Obama's, not McCain's), and it played out.  Mitt Romney?  Well, he should have won; I'd like to know why he didn't finish crushing Obama in the last two debates, but there's not a book in that.

Hillary, on the other hand, well, that's a horse of a different color.  We knew her from her career as a senator and Secretary of State, and before that in an eventful turn as first lady.  But we didn't know her, really.  Plenty of stories floated out over the years from people like Secret Service agents, telling stories of her violent temper, ash tray throwing, vicious arguments with Bill Clinton over his philandering and the like.

And, of course, the secrecy was a problem.  Who, after all, prepares for a Cabinet position by planning to shield their official communications from FOIA inquiries, using a private, unsecured mail server?  And when the server does get subpoenaed, who bleach-bits the be-jesus out of it before the FBI can get at it?

We always knew that there was a big part of her that we were unsure of.  With a temper like that, with secrecy fanaticism like that, it was very possible that she rendered herself immune, in her close circle during the campaign, from being criticized, or perhaps even from being disagreed with.  Because there were so many stories that suggested we had been fed a line by her "people" all those years about her, it seemed reasonable that were being fed untruths about her campaign.

The run for the presidency blew up catastrophically for her in November.  Donald Trump never led until the votes were counted; memorably for Hillary, she refused to come out and talk to her dedicated supporters on the night she had to concede -- and apparently, had to be talked into making the concession call by Barack Obama.

A failure like that is fascinating.  Although she was leading the entire way in the polls, she was never able to poll high enough to suggest an actual win.  Independent voters were tracking with the Republicans far more than Hillary.  When the topic arose of "Why I'm not ahead by 50 points", as she so memorably put it, it was always that there was no message being conveyed, no case to vote for her.  She had a uterus, that was the rationale, it seemed.

And so we want to know how a campaign that should have won big over such a flawed campaigner and weak debater as Donald Trump, actually lost.  Who tried to tell her things were not as rosy as they might have seemed?  Who on her team tried to get an actual message put together for her, an argument for why she should be president that did not involve her chromosomes?

Now that is real intrigue.  And for that, I'd buy a book.  In a month or two, probably.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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