Primary Colors Gets My Vote
Primary Colors by Joe Klein
Some books remind me of cartoons, with lots of action, sharp outlines, and bright hues.
Others are like paintings - exquisitely detailed canvases that start with small dots of color, and work their way up.
Primary Colors blends the best of both approaches. The 1996 novel by Joe Klein (a.k.a. Anonymous) portrays its subject with a well-balanced combination of bold splashes and delicate brushstrokes. The result provides an absorbing - and often hilarious - glimpse behind the scenes of a presidential campaign - its processes, its players, and its psychology.
"I had grown up in a politics of logic, compromise, and detail. I was ready for a ride." - Henry Burton
After six years as a congressional aide, Henry Burton was sick of "politics as usual." He was tired of counting heads, negotiating deals, and fighting over insignificant things.
Jack Stanton, a Southern governor running for president, promised something quite different: compassion, hope, a sense of destiny, qualities sorely lacking in the pols Burton had worked for in the past. So Burton signs on as campaign manager, believing that Stanton will make history - and wanting to be a part of it.
Primary Colors," narrated by Burton, trails him and Stanton through several months of campaigning, starting as the former is wooed into joining Stanton's staff, and ending as he is trying to resign. In between, Burton is plunged into a whirlwind of activity:
- accompanying Stanton to speeches, meetings, and other events both big and small;
- dealing with various crises;
- meeting and working with (or against) an array of characters;
- and most of all, learning the good and the bad about his candidate.
That's Bill Clinton, right?
Well, this is a work of fiction. But it sure looks like him, doesn't it?
There's no denying that Klein, who covered the 1992 presidential campaign for New York, used Clinton and other people as starting points for Primary Colors. Even some of the bit players - such as Orlando Ozio, a New York governor who can't decide if he should join the race - have clear counterparts in real life.
It is tempting to waste time trying to figure out who's who; I'm probably one of many who bought the book out of curiosity. But like the brouhaha that erupted when Klein was unmasked as Anonymous, such guesswork, when carried to extremes, is ultimately distracting. My advice: don't spend the whole novel compiling every little scrap of information on the Stantons just so you can apply it to the Clintons.
The Bold Splashes
Presidential campaigns are eventful to begin with (well, most are), but the Primary Colors contest is a real roller-coaster ride. Many obstacles stand in Stanton's way: competitors who ambush him during debates or pummel him with negative ads, reporters who question him about long-ago indiscretions, and women who come forward with accusations of past affairs. Besides these trials and tribulations, there's the normal hustle and bustle of a campaign - heated strategy discussions, rousing rallies, tense interviews, and the like.
The plot isn't the only thing larger than life - the people are, too. Klein's canvas features a remarkable group of characters, sketched in a few sure strokes. In one passage, the author, through Burton (a keenly observant and quite funny narrator), deftly describes Richard Jemmons, a political strategist:
"He was manic, obsessive, very strange-looking, thin as a whippet - his body and all his features were narrow, thin lips, thin nose, dark thinning hair, which made his thick, black-frame eyeglasses seem enormous...He was an explosive talker, though not always comprehensible - all honks and bleats, mutters and half-swallowed imprecations."
Equal treatment is afforded to just about everyone in the cast, from Stanton himself ("he was a big fellow, looking seriously pale on the streets of Harlem in deep summer") to an unnamed audience member who appears in only one scene, "wearing sunglasses and shellacked hair of a color that did not occur in nature."
The Delicate Brushstrokes
Though I get a kick out of the campaign's thrills and spills, I also enjoy the subtler shades of Klein's work. The journalist, like his fictional campaign manager, picks up on the smallest details. One of the opening paragraphs explains the mechanics of that indispensable political technique, the handshake; another describes the traits of what Burton calls aerobic listening, "as if he were hearing quicker than you can get the words out, as if he were sucking the information out of you."
Primary Colors also devotes material to the nuances of character and personality, Stanton's and Burton's in particular. As campaign manager, the narrator naturally spends a good deal of time analyzing his candidate's traits ("there was intense familiarity, but no intimacy.") More surprisingly, Klein has Burton take the time to examine his own life: his thoughts on race, his reservations about politics, and his essential, yet somehow rootless existence as Stanton's "body man":
"...Other people just have lives. Their normality can seem a reproach. It hurts your eyes, like walking out of a matinee into bright sunlight. Then it passes. He screws up a line, it's Q&A time, it's time to move."
After skimming the book for this review, I'm starting to think that Burton is just as fascinating a creation as Stanton - and perhaps more.
The verdict: five out of five stars
Primary Colors won my vote - and a spot on my bookshelf - four years ago. This is one novel that actually delivers what the jacket blurbs promise. Its only downside is one Klein can't help: the movie suffers in comparison.
