Review: Playing President: My Close Ecounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush

Playing President: My Close Ecounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush by Robert Scheer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a collection of Scheer's interviews with and columns about presidents from Playboy and Los Angeles Times. Nixon & Reagan come across to me as wise and manipulative in the latter and gentler and more manipulated in the latter. More of a surprise to me as I recall a Reagan myth of goofy cowboy actor and drawing a straight line to senile befuddlement. Apparently, a shrewd operator acted betwixt. Nixon comes across more as Dubya to Kissinger's Karl Rove ... and who do we still have? Well, it is all thought-provoking these early, in-depth interviews with candidates campaigning for office. Carter squirming in his Playboy interview comes across as authentic and brave while Schneer commonly comes across as persnickety and needling. Clinton seems gracious to fawning and trying to get close to this left-wing scribe who seems coy and awed, both Bushes have the least revealing material and especially columns criticizing Bush (rightly in retrospect) for ignoring The Taliban, etc. seems to add nothing and only be here to move books.



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