Customer Reviews

The Boys on the Bus

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This book is an account of the 1972 presidential campaign. Crouse's account set the standard for books about presidential campaigns; a standard that has not yet been beaten.

The 1972 campaign involved the first real attempt by campaigns to spin-doctor the press and American people during a campaign. Previously, we left that to the already elected.

The 1972 campaign also marked the first real attempt by networks to create stars out of reporters. This network tactic has continued unabated until the present. In fact, recent studies have reported that reporters now receive much more air time than the actual candidates.

Crouse's book is essential reading for political junkies as well as history buffs. The 1972 election was truly a watershed event which continued through the Watergate era.

Crouse's groundbreaking book on the 1972 Presidential campaign was reveolutionary in the way it covered the reporters who covered the election. This was the first step in to turning these reporters into "stars" in their own right. Who can doubt today that the visibility one gets from being a reporter on a successful Presidential campaign can transform you into a highly paid and visible "talking head." Crouse's book is well written, informative and quite amusing, which is appropriate since he spent the campaign hanging out with the immortal Hunter S. Thompson. A must for political junkies.

This brilliantly conceived and executed book pulled back the curtain on the culture of covering presidential campaigns much like Theodore White's The Making of the President before it. Smooth and seemless prose is marred only slightly by the contrived tactic of attempting one line physical descriptions of principals "a bull of a man," "a lovely and smart woman," etc.

Structurally, the book proceeds from the failed Muskie campaign and an introduction of some of the icons of the industry at the time (two, David Broder and Robert Novak, must be packed in ice every night and only thawed out to give television appearences, such is their longevity) to Nixon's campaign, the not yet completed Watergate investigation of Woodward and Bernstein, and then finally the doomed McGovern campaign once again. The technique is man on the scene, interspersed with set interviews in which the interviewer is an actor.

Crouse's classic is entertaining and informative. It is entertaining because of the colorful portraits of a gang of mostly fun loving guys and a few jerks, and informative because it shows that the true bias of the press is an establishment bias, much more complicated than a simple left-right dichotomy, it's the institutional pressures of the job that leads to the press's often distorted views. Yes, the reporters trend liberal, but the editors and publishers trend conservative, and in recent years the line has blurred between the interests of the publishers and their employees. These guys are not scrappily taking in about the same salary as a bus driver or construction worker anymore, their vibe is much more movie star. Yet now as then, the real distortion is the pack mentality and fear of being the outlier in coverage, suspect by editors with no other framework for evaluation. We've become much more aware of this in recent years, with discussion of the press's "meta-narrative," an overarching theme like "Bush dumb" or "Kerry flip-flops," or yet more infamously, the fiasco of weapons of mass destruction, but it is still instructive to see a character study into the precise details of how it happens.

Hunter Thompson's book on the same campaign "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" provides a good contrast to this book, as does Norman Mailer's "Miami and the Siege of Chicago : An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968." Both are worth examining if you are interested in politics and the period.

Timothy Crouse was one of the first to report on the pack journalism covering a Presidential campaign. Readers ride along on crowded busses during the 1972 campaign, witnessing press personalities like Hunter S. Thompson, R. W. Apple, Ted White, etc., and noting their strengths and inefficiencies. The book is partly about politics, but more about the life of pack jounralism. The book begins in the snows of New Hampshire as early-favorite Ed Muskie fades and George McGovern surges to the Democratic nomination. Later, comes the non-campaign when President Nixon sidestepped the press (and any discussion of issues) thus letting the media's scrutiny fall heavily on the more accessible but flawed-and-doomed McGovern effort. We see that while many reporters indeed lean to the left, their editors and managers usually lean rightward, and charges of liberal bias are usually doubtful. Crouse only partly comprehends how campaigns manipulate the media - something done with far more sophistication by today's politicos. Still, this is a gripping, readable book, one that takes an interesting look at press coverage and Presidential politics.

This book doesn't necessarily analyze news coverage of political campaigns, but it describes what it is like to be there and be a part of it. Actually, the book describes what it *was* like, because it is evident that many things in campaign reporting and the White House press corps have changed. Though it's not very dramatic, anyone who wants a close look at the gritty, sleepless, amusing and often hilarious world of covering a political campaign needs to read this.

Timothy Crouse covered the 1972 presidential campaign. It was a lousy campaign. George McGovern stoodn't any chance against president Richard Nixon. Nixon refused being engaged in any campaigning at all. He seemed to deny that in an election even the president of the United States submits himself to the jury of the America voters. It must have been a frustrating campaign for McGovern who honestly tried to provoke discussions between the candidates. Timothy Crouse gives us an revealing insight in the way the press covered this presidential campaign. The Nixon campaign team led by White House spokesman Ron Ziegler avoided presidential press conferences and sufficed with written handouts. Nixon's team was apt to win the election because they knew the importance of the first strike. 'A charge is usually put on the front page; the defense is buried among the deodorant ads". Ziegler once announced that 700.000 people had come out to see Nixon in Atlanta. Jim Perry of the National Observer phoned the Atlanta Public Works to check it out. He found out that each city block was about 400 feet long. He estimated that 400 people a block, 5 rows deep, for 15 blocks had seen Richard Nixon. That made 60.000 people. He threw in another 15.000 people to cover the side streets and finally he wrote that "in act of charity I am willing to say that 75.000 people turned out to welcome Richard Nixon to Atlanta'. So 75.000 istead of 700.000!! Crouse invented the term pack journalism. It is a kind a groupthink, common when reporters have limited access to information and consensus is emerging about what is newsworthy. The 1972 campaign is not a glorious example of independent stubborn journalism. Crouse's book is fun reading especially when you keep in mind the forthcoming 2008 presidential elections.

This is not a book for those that are looking for an involved plot. It is a book full of information about the campaign trial and the way politicians and the press interact. I found it very interesting. Timothy Crouse has a nice writting style that gets you involved with the book. The Boys on the Bus has many interesting facts from behind the scenes. This book grew out of a Rolling Stones artical on the press. I would recomend this book to anybody looking for information on political reporting or just interesting facts about our own political system. A related book is by Hunter Thompson, another Rolling Stone reporter, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trial '72 (I've never read it but I hear it is also good)

The Boys on the Bus is a very entertaining look at the reporters covering the 1972 election and the system in which they worked in. If you want to know how the press room in the White House smelled this is your book. If you want to know how reporters interact with each other after the press conference ends this is your book. In addition, Crouse offers great portraits of important journalists covering politics in that era, many of which are still working or known today - David Broder and Bob Novak would be two prime examples.

Crouse demonstrates that most journalists during the campaign were to the left of center politically and he argues that it didn't really show up in the reporting. He criticizes the press for their inability to offer any kind of news analysis in their stories. The White House was so masterful in presenting information that straight reporting made it very easy to manipulate the press. Plus McGovern's inept campaign led the politically sympathetic reporters to lose all respect for his ambitions. There's a funny scene where the reporters kick McGovern's press secretary off the bus, something that they would never consider doing to the evasive but professional Nixon man, Ron Zigler.

Crouse moves the story along briskly and I poured through it faster than an average book on this subject. I would argue that it's more influential to members of the press than ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN. Not every reporter is going to do the long and hard legwork that Woodward and Bernstein did in that classic. But any reporter can apply news analysis. It's as easy as filtering the news through their own opinions, or simply tackling the kinds of stories in line with their own prejudices.

All the seeds of modern political reporting are an outgrowth from Crouse's criticism of the lapdog press. That's the real genius of this book. You can see how it was effective enough to convince reporters that the ends justify the means. The process of reading BOYS is a joy and its influence certainly puts a lot of modern day reporting into perspective.

Imagine Jon Stewart (minus the constant snark) wrote a book about the White House press corps and political journalism generally as they covered the presidential contest in 1972 and you are close to what this book is all about. While writing for Rolling Stone, Crouse examines the phenomenon of "pack journalism" - the tendency for the major reporters to all write the same stories and not stick their necks out very far. Some of the quotes he gets from the more observant political reporters are equally applicable today as then. Take Brit Hume, "What they [the press] passes off as objectivity is just a mindless kind of neutrality."

It's truly astonishing that you could substitute nearly all the occurrences of Nixon and substitute Bush and the book would need to change only a little bit. The portraits of the reporters themselves are just about the same, and I suspect if I actually knew the names of all the reporters now that they would be just about as interchangeable as Nixon and Bush. The parallels are so striking that I began to wonder how many Bush campaign staffers cut their teeth in Nixon's campaigns. The resemblance to the present is uncanny: a reluctance to give any press conferences, insisting on the existence of liberal bias in the media, issuing ready-made press releases, and essentially stymying all investigation. Of course, Bush hasn't (and likely will not have) anything quite like Watergate but most of the other behaviors (the legal ones) have been utilized amazingly well into the present.

In this way, it is oddly comforting to know that our country has made it though an administration like this before and emerged intact and will likely do so again.

Recommended, despite the draggy spots.

The book was in better condition then I expected, and it arrived right away. I would definitely do business with this vendor, and I highly recommend him/her/them.