Anonymous (Joe Klein): Primary Colors. A Novel of Politics. NY: Random House, 1996. 366 pp.
Readers may want to dust off their copy of Primary Colors as the 2016 election season heats up, if only to see whether any insights can be gleaned into the protagonist’s wife. If they do, they will find that Susan Stanton is one tough cookie. When NY governor Orlando Ozio (father of the current NY governor) decides he will not enter the campaign after all, her response is, “It’s too bad…. Because I would just love to have had the opportunity to crush that scumbag.” (pg. 60) She’s talking, let’s remember, about a member of her own party.
When it comes to her relationship with her spouse, we find this: By “drawing attention to her perfection,” she was reminding everyone “of her husband’s imperfection.” (pg. 119) The comparison of him to Pigpen remains relevant today: “A permanent cloud of dirt follows him around… A cloud like that doesn’t happen by accident.” (pg. 239) Likewise this description of what drives him: “Jack can’t stand not being loved.” (pg. 269) At the same time, the novel presents him as successful in part because he is generally a reactive politician, not one who tries to force the implementation of some grand strategy over the long term. This ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, rather than striving to be transformative, turns out to be a significant political plus, something that applies not just to the American domestic scene.
Getting back to Susan, she remains the fiercely loyal fighter, the one who won’t give up when everyone else in the campaign thinks they can see the handwriting on the wall. From the start, she is ready to identify any setback not as an inevitable response to their own missteps, but as the result of an insidious campaign waged by their political enemies. When her husband’s peccadilloes cause his poll numbers to drop, she doesn’t blame him, rather she says, “Is there anyone here who thinks these attacks on us haven’t been orchestrated, part of a plan to wipe out the strongest Democrat before he took off?” (pg. 143) This is when she is at her combative best, not when coasting along in the lead.
The novel shows how her grit helped propel them through the rough patches to the nomination in 1992, and we know from history that Hillary very nearly pulled off the same thing for her own candidacy in 2008. If determination alone had been the key factor, she would have succeeded – proving that the conspiratorial mindset can be a source of significant inner strength. On the other hand, the novel gets a bit off track when it includes a brief and rather superfluous sexual encounter between her and the narrator. This is included mainly because the author had a point he wanted to illustrate about “Mrs. Stanton’s need for physical solace in times of spousal despair.” (pg. 337) The episode is wisely omitted in the movie version.
The book is of course dated in some respects – how could it not be? Here, the first event of the electoral season is New Hampshire, not Iowa. There is no mention of push polling, and get-out-the-vote efforts are comparatively rudimentary. There are no bloggers, no Fox News, no Tea Party. Aside from such details, though, the larger outlines remain familiar. And when we read, “Democratic governors and mayors of New York were famous for detesting each other and playing out their enmities obliquely, but obviously,” it’s as true now as it was then. (pg. 259)
The novel does lose a little steam at the end, when the focus shifts away from the Stantons. Maybe the question of whether the narrator’s self-respect will compel him to leave the campaign or not is a big deal for him, less so for us. What we care about is whether the candidate’s quest will finally succeed, not the salvation of his aide’s soul. In any event, by now readers should be able to ignore the circus surrounding the discovery of Anonymous’s true identity (Joe Klein) and judge the book on its own merits. Those who do so will find that it holds up remarkably well over all.
Recommended not just for political junkies, but for candidates, potential candidates and their families. Even if you’re not one of them, after reading this you will have a better idea why they may be a bit reluctant to jump into a presidential primary campaign.
Updates
May 2017
This review errs in saying not much has fundamentally changed in the intervening years. The media and communications environment is entirely different. This was brought home to me recently when my students told me not only do they not watch news on TV, they don’t even own TVs.
Sept. 2017
Just saw Spencer Ackerman on “Reliable Sources” say that the election of 2016 occurred as much on Facebook as anywhere else. Which only underlines the point of the previous update, namely: My original review was naive. What I wrote was true for me, but not for people under forty. A sobering thought.
March 2018
“It’s as if people who work professionally in politics just want to pretend that it’s still pre-2008, whereas the entire system of politics has completely changed. Facebook advertising is the most powerful tool in politics. I don’t think we’re doing nearly enough to avoid another legitimacy crisis around this.” – Niall Ferguson
August 2018
“In Joe Klein’s roman å clef Primary Colors, the Bill Clinton character ‘Jack Stanton’ is forced to submit to a paternity test. It’s negative. He’s not the father. But then it emerges that Stanton submitted someone else’s blood. As the dialog between the characters explains, that doesn’t mean Stanton is the father. The key aide actually thinks he’s probably not. But he switched the blood sample because he wasn’t sure he wasn’t. Which was crystal clear evidence that he had the affair. That’s what mattered.” – Josh Marshall at TPM, in an article entitled “We Know Trump is Guilty. We’re Having a Hard Time Admitting It.”
© Hamilton Beck
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