Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton -- and

How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.

Third edition containing new material and an added index.
By Robert Scheer
Akashic Books; $14.95; Paper; ISBN 1-933354-01-1
2006
300 pp.

by Tim W. Brown

Playing President is a new collection of previously published interviews and op-ed

essays by long-time Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist Robert Scheer. Scheer's close

encounters with these ex-presidents have resulted in many valuable documents gathered in one

book. The notorious Playboy Magazine interview with Jimmy Carter, in which he confessed,

"I've committed adultery in my heart many times" [98], surely qualifies as historically

significant. Sometimes, though, I’m not sure if Scheer knows what treasures are in his

possession.

In his preface, Scheer asserts that becoming President of the United States involves

playing a role. To be president, one has to act presidential: "it revolves around a performer and a

largely untutored electorate that is his jury and his audience" [15]. This statement is a huge cliché

and has been known to political observers since at least Franklin Roosevelt's day (if not

Theodore Roosevelt's), when FDR's handlers never let him be filmed or photographed in his

wheelchair, because he would appear physically diminished, i.e., less than presidential. To pin his

whole book around this thesis is like someone at Scientific American announcing his new

discovery that gravity is a fact of physics.

Thus, Scheer spends a good percentage of the book arguing a point that virtually

everybody concedes is true. Scheer would have done better simply to reprint his articles and

interviews without editorializing. For there are dozens of passages in these writings by

1
themselves that reveal a lot about the men who would lead us. Richard M. Nixon was self-

serving. Jimmy Carter was the manufactured product of political consultants. Ronald Reagan

was a scary true believer. George H. W. Bush was prickly and uninformed. Bill Clinton was a

traitor to his liberal base. George W. Bush has basically slummed it as President. Most of these

depictions largely accord with the public's perceptions. Yet these generalities were constantly

undermined by the men's words and demeanor, and it is clear that Scheer has the appropriate

talent and chutzpah for interviewing them and eliciting deeper truths. In particular, Reagan and

Clinton are shown as complex individuals who cannot be easily summarized in one sentence.

As a resident of California, Scheer already had some experience with the personality of

the elusive "Dutch" Reagan due to following and reporting on his gubernatorial career. In "The

Reagan Question," originally published in the August 1980 issue of Playboy, Scheer dwelled on

the contradictions of Reagan and his appeal to voters. "On the one hand, the puritanical and aged

warrior intoning a death chant against the godless Communists, permissive government, the

immoral homosexuals, the welfare cheats, unrelenting and simplistic in its enmity but always

self-righteous and pure. On the other hand, the people drawn to him tended to be more varied

and hip than one would expect from the campaign rhetoric" [39].

During the early years of his presidency, Reagan indeed drew a hard line against a long

list of conservative bugaboos. Eventually seeing that this governing tactic only went so far, he

moderated his stances, especially toward the Soviets, by 1986. And notwithstanding many dire

predictions that Reagan would start World War III, he proved, nowhere covered by Scheer, to

have greater vision than his contemporaries in how to hasten the demise of the Soviet regime--

including rock-solid Cold Warrior Richard Nixon to whom Scheer referred with newfound

affection during Reagan's presidency in "Nixon: Scorn Yielding to New Respect.”

2
 In "Forget Dole; Here's the Ideal GOP Candidate," an L.A. Times op-ed from Aug. 6, 1996,

Scheer wrote about Bill Clinton that "[t]he Democrats are better positioned to hurt the poor and

favor the rich because they have so much credibility with liberals who care. Just as it took a

hawk like Nixon to embrace Mao Tse-tung [sic] and legitimize Communist rule in China as a

victory for the Free World, it required a 'New Democrat' like Clinton to force millions of

additional children into poverty as an act of charity" [225-226]. This statement probably

mischaracterized Clinton's intentions regarding welfare reform, but it summed up the liberal

consensus at the time.

Scheer finally gave Clinton his due, not least for balancing the budget, in an L.A. Times essay

reprinted from 2000, "Admit It; He's Not Perfect, but He's a Great President." Toward the end of

Clinton's presidency, all was forgiven by Scheer, which makes me wonder why he spent so much

energy raking Clinton over the coals in his articles from 1992 to 1999. The internecine battles

waged among liberals over the minute degrees of their liberalism may have been responsible.

Here is a good point to pause and observe a general failing of the book. Scheer evidently

believes in a Manichean universe -- Left versus Right, men in white hats versus men in black

hats, you're either for 'em or agin 'em. It's been said that Reagan spoke from the Right but

governed from the Center. The same could be said about Nixon and George H. W. Bush.

Conversely, Clinton governed from the Left and spoke from the Center. My argument being that,

in the U.S. political system, successful governing has required a delicate balancing act of

pursuing your principals while simultaneously appealing to the middle position favored by a

majority of the electorate. Scheer doesn't seem to recognize this point, or, if he does, he ignores it

in favor of peddling a dualistic conception of American politics.

3
 Unlike the earlier presidents discussed in Playing President, George W. Bush speaks from the

Right and governs from the Right, yet he somehow got elected twice while defying the usual

formula. Perhaps it was due to this fact that Scheer's "Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush

I, Reagan, and Clinton" did not, as he claims in the book's subtitle, "Prepare Me for George W.

Bush." Playing President's last section deals with the current president and consists of recent op-

ed essays that allow Scheer to rip W without the constraints of journalistic objectivity that beset

him when conversing with Nixon, Carter, et al. The weakness of this section is that Scheer never

sat down and talked personally with W like the others.

Still, he describes W deadly accurately, calling him a "perpetual adolescent." "Bush

affected a deliberate air of diffidence from an early age, suggesting that he took on assignments

only reluctantly, whether as student, businessman, or politician, interpreting each challenge in

turn as more of a bother than an obligation. Winging it, but always propped up by a considerable

retinue of those more disciplined than he, has proved an enormously effective ploy" [233].

The ploy to get elected twice may have been effective, but as a governing style it surely

hasn’t worked, as Scheer observed in piece after piece of outraged opinion published through

2006, when the book leaves off. Scheer criticized W for engaging in irresponsible fiscal policies,

coddling the Taliban prior to September 11, 2001, taking his marching orders from the Religious

Right and, especially, constantly changing his rationale for attacking Iraq. In at least two

instances he demanded the president's impeachment. Never mind that this was an unrealistic

option when these articles were written and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress --

another example of Scheer's curious political naïveté.

Though he often guesses wrong about these men’s trajectories, Scheer still successfully

manages to share many psychological insights. The generously long articles allowed him by

4
editors as recently as the 1980s, which enabled him to speak at length with his subjects --

disallowed today in our current sound bite culture -- were crucial to obtaining these penetrating

exchanges. If I were assembling this book, I would have stuck to the superb primary sources

rather than practicing hindsight in the chapter introductions. In her cover blurb, Joan Didion

declares that "Robert Scheer is one of the best reporters of our time." I would agree that Scheer is

an excellent reporter, but his historical conclusions are sometimes facile.