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They Also Ran

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This is quite possibly one of the most important books on American politics ever written. The reason for that is that the book analyzes the gist of American election politics, and in an impossibly slim volume, by dispassionately analyzing the fates of losers in presidential elections, gives an exhaustive breakdown of how the American system of government has worked and how it has failed. This is a must-read for anyone who ever plans to participate in an election, and is high on my list of books that should be read by EVERYONE who aspires to be a citizen in a democratic country.

Irving Stone was one heck of a writer and it's a shame that his books are so hard to find now. They Also Ran tells the stories of the men who ran for president and lost. It talks about who these men were, what shaped them and what they did once the campaign was done. It really makes you wonder (or shiver) at what might have been.

At one point in this book, Irving Stone humorously notes that Winfield Scott, father of the American army and Whig presidential candidate in 1852, dreamed of having his life story gloriously chronicled by a future Plutarch. One gets the sense that Stone wished to oblige him; "They Also Ran", which tells the story of twenty defeated presidential candidates (from 1824 to 1948), is Stone's own effort to create an American counterpart for the great Roman biographer/judge. While the end result is certainly entertaining, it falls far short of reaching its goal.

For one thing, Plutarch's historiographical and biographical style was firmly entrenched in the Roman tradition of his contemporaries, men like Suetonius and Tacitus who transcribed events not for the purpose of educating or even entertaining their readers, but rather instructing them as to the proper way of judging powerful people from the past. What's more, Plutarch organized his book on the basis of abstract themes (eloquence, honor, etc.) rather than according to any empirical historical criteria. The end result is highly entertaining and, due to Plutarch's great gifts as a historian, surprisingly detailed and informative. Such a balancing act is hard to pull off, and one must applaud Plutarch for succeeding so brilliantly.

Yet Stone is no Plutarch, and his effort to replicate Plutarch's feat is often just as unsettling as it is enlightening. Men like Henry Clay and William Jennings Bryan are condemned with a passion almost frightening in its intensity, while other characters like Lewis Cass and Alton Parker are praised with equal fervor. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Stone's opinions is in many ways besides the point, however; far too often his biases actually impair his abilities as a historian, such as in his refusal to acknowledge the fact that points-of-view exist which differ from his own (most historians, for example, do not share his harsh verdict on Clay), and the often glaring omissions and errors he makes in order to buttress his claims (such as ignoring Bryan's pacifist motivations for resigning as Secretary of State in 1915, and instead lamely claiming that this was primarily due to incompetence as a way of further condemning his character). Equally unsuccessful are Stone's attempts to link thematically link together candidates from different periods of history, as he often goes to great lengths to draw connections between two or three very different men on the most tenuous of grounds (such as Greeley and Cox both being newspaper editors) while failing to successfully dig deeper into the ideological, personal, and other transcendental qualities that truly might have linked men from disparate periods of history.

To be fair, these problems aren't entirely Stone's fault. The standards for historiography and biography have changed drastically since Plutarch picked up a pen two millenia ago, which wouldn't work in the favor of anyone who attempted to impersonate such a style. And despite this setback, some of his biographies actually work - his chapters on Alfred E. Smith and Wendell Willkie, for example, are superb. And I could not in all justice claim that Stone's book isn't entertaining - the man holds an able pen, and his book is a gripping page-turner in ways that one wouldn't expect for such a text. If only Stone had been just a tad more objective, this would be a perfect primer for someone who wishes to learn more about American presidential history. As it stands, his work can be viewed as a great way to enjoyable pass the time, so long as his readers take what he writes with several shakers of salt.

It's been a few years since I read this book, but it's still one of the best books I've ever read. Stone is a great writer, and he offers rich, incisive portraits of the many failed presidential aspirants. It is always possible to disagree with the conclusions of such a subjective study. But Stone writes so well that many of his descpriptions are still etched in my memory. Especially for someone who loves presidential politics, as I do, this book is a masterpiece. It is a shame that he isn't around to update his study. We need more political writers like Stone.