22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A witty and insightful look at the 2000 presidential contest, June 5, 2001
By A Customer
Jeff Greenfield is widely recognized as one of the premier political analysts in America. And, with the publication of "Oh Waiter" he proves that he's a terrific writer as well. Greenfield graduated from Harvard Law and went straight to work for Senator Robert Kennedy. After Kennedy's death in 1968 he worked as an aide for several other major politicians before tackling a new career as a political commentator for ABC News. His witty yet shrewd analyses of leading politicians quickly made him into a star. By the 1990's Greenfield was working for CNN. As the book reveals, Greenfield longs for the days before exit polling and other modern techniques allowed the political "experts" to know who was going to win the election hours before the polls even closed. On election night 2000 Greenfield (and many other political junkies) got their wish - a VERY close election - but as Greenfield dryly notes, this election was proof positive that you need to be careful what you wish for. As befits Greenfield's on-air style, "Oh Waiter" educates as well as it entertains. He offers a perceptive insight (and a highly amusing one) into the personalities and weaknesses of Al Gore and George W. Bush, as well as why neither candidate could ever pull away to a comfortable lead (they were mirror images of each other). He describes why John McCain, for all the excitement he generated in the Republican primaries, never really had a chance against Bush and the conservative GOP establishment. The best part of the book, in my opinion, were the two chapters which covered CNN's election night coverage. Again, Greenfield offers both amusing commentary and shrewd insight in equal measure. He is also fair (or at least equally harsh) to both sides, and he isn't afraid to skewer his own profession - the media - for their mistakes either. He vividly explains why the sophisticated election-predicting system all the TV networks used was a disaster waiting to happen, and why it finally DID happen in 2000. And, last but not least, Greenfield explains why it was virtually impossible for Gore to have won the presidency, even if all the "what-if" scenarios had gone his way (basically, the Republicans simply wanted it more, to get even with the Clintons). If you enjoy reading a book that in the span of a few pages will have you laughing out loud and then will offer some real insight into the workings of the modern American political system (and vice versa), then you'll find "Oh, Waiter" impossible to resist. I know I did - I intended to simply skim through it in my local bookstore and 2 hours later wound up buying it because I simply had to finish it. Like Teddy White's famed classic "The Making of the President 1960", this book in another 20 or 30 years may itself be seen as a classic look at one of the closest, most exciting - and strangest - presidential elections in American history.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A witty & insightful look at the 2000 Presidential Election, May 29, 2001
By A Customer
Jeff Greenfield is one of the premier political analysts in America, and as this book proves, he's also a terrific writer. I originally was going to "skim" this book in a local bookstore and wound up spending two hours in the store reading it before I decided that I simply had to buy it and finish it. There are already several books out in print about last year's marathon, history-making presidential race, but this one is by far the best. Greenfield manages to combine both a serious analysis of the election - why Bush and Gore were so perfectly matched as opponents (they mirrored each other's strengths and weaknesses), why the South voted Republican while the North went Democratic, why Bush won (and Gore lost), the "what-if" scenarios (and why he believes that Bush would have won the election even if all the "what-ifs" had broken Gore's way), and even why John McCain couldn't defeat Bush despite his huge wins in the New Hampshire and Michigan primaries - with a delightful, biting sense of humor that shines through on every page. Greenfield's analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Bush and Gore's personalities is both hilarious and on-target, as are his comments on the supporting players from Bill Clinton to Katherine Harris. And, as the title suggests, Greenfield doesn't spare his own profession - the media - from his barbs. His two chapters on covering the election night for CNN are by themselves worth the price of the book. If you're looking to buy just one book about one of the closest (and strangest) presidential elections in history, then "Oh, Waiter" is by far the best choice. Not only will you learn a great deal about the 2000 campaign and the "behind-the-scenes" battles that you didn't know about before, but you'll also find yourself laughing out loud at many of Greenfield's comments. A great book!
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Crow" is candid, with wit!, June 19, 2001
By A Customer
I highly recommend "Waiter, One Order of Crow" for general readers who value candor about the process of American presidential campaigns and elections. Greenfield, CNN's senior political analyst, displays it in his review of the 2000 presidential campaign and election. He is candid about the chaos of election night, for which, accidentally, media pundits were admittedly partly responsible. He pokes fun at the media's excitement over this unusual election, "too-close-to-call" even in early polling data, and at himself. He goes the extra miles to try to explain the causes for the chaos. I believe some of his explanations depend on some subtleties and technicalities in political science. I suspect that mistrust of CNN in this case is truly misplaced. There are inevitable unpredictable events and errors of strategies in campaigns. Political scientists still have an interest to have models to forecast presidential election results. Political news, and Greenfield's book, are built out of those realities.
Unfortunately, many reviewers' of this book have misrepresented what is written at various points. Some points are easier to correct than others, but in what follows I try to correct all those I saw:
* First, Greenfield's law school education is from Yale, not Harvard;
* Like many media folks, if not most, Greenfield is on the liberal end of the ideological spectrum (after all, it is liberalism that most supports a free press and opposes censorship of political news) but, it is to his credit that he reveals his bias without being blind to the successes of Bush and the failings of Gore;
* About Senator Bradley and the role of ideology in the Democratic campaign--Greenfield said Bradley lacked a fighting spirit, not that he was too liberal, and Greenfield's larger point is that all candidates in the primary elections have to first win an ideological base of supporters, and in the general election they have to win the undecided independents without losing their ideological base;
* Greenfield did not blame Clinton for Gore's loss, but he points out that Gore's campaign strategy did not use Clinton when and where it might have helped in the popular vote;
* According to Greenfield, CNN did not call the election one-hour before the Florida panhandle's polls closed, but 15 minutes before closing (still too soon, given the closeness of the race, so it could not have cost Bush 15,000 votes as the Bush campaign folks alleged; and further west, the loss of votes if there were some would, statistically, be on both sides.
* Greenfield's more subtle or technical "political science" points dealt with the accuracy of exit polls, the uses of sample precincts and key precincts, how raw totals from AP should have enabled cross-checking against mistakes in sample data, the mistaken data from one of Florida's sample precinct's numbers on election night being caused by a computer glitch (discovered by an astute AP reporter, then corrected), and how Bush would have won no matter what (once the contested election was under way) because all the institutions that could have decided the outcome were in Republican hands, except the Florida Supreme Court. The upshot is that there was no media conspiracy to steal the election from Bush for Gore. I have no reason to disbelieve Greenfield's take on these events.
In conclusion, Greenfield's candid reader will learn that for the 2000 presidential race there was a 50-50 division in the country, the forecasting models did not pick up on the two major parties' candidates' share of the popular vote being that close, thus the media replicated those errors. For any presidential race hindsight is always 20/20 relative to forecasting. I hope my review encourages the good-humored citizen still caring about American democracy to give Greenfield's book on the presidential election of 2000 a candid read.
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