CARLSON (page 101): The campaign, or specifically the campaign plane, is the last time the press gets to see the man who would be president more closely than an attentive viewer of C-SPAN. Bush didn’t like campaigning, so he treated the time on the press like recess, a chance to kick back between math and chemistry classes. He was seductive, playful, and most of all, himself. It’s a failure of some in the press—well, a failure for me—that we are susceptible to a politician directing the high beams of his charm at us. That Al Gore couldn’t catch a break had something to do with how he was when his hair was down. Only it never was.

Needless to say, that was because Gore was (next paragraph) “intent on proving he was the smartest kid on the planet.” But your press corps never seems to tire of making these odd confessions. Routinely, they report that they judge your pols, and tilt their coverage, based on trivial matters of personality and personal preference.

Carlson goes on, at considerable length, about how Bush “bond[ed] with the goof-off in all of us” on that plane. Persistently, she portrays the press corps—and herself—as if they were feckless teen-agers. On the plane, “[Bush’s] inner child hovers near the surface,” she writes. And not only that; “Bush knows how to push the buttons of your high school insecurity.” But then, “a campaign is as close as an adult can get to duplicating college life.” Bush “wasn’t just any old breezy frat brother with mediocre grades…He was proud of it,” Carlson writes, approvingly. This seems to explain the press corps’ preference. “Gore elicited in us the childish urge to poke a stick in the eye of the smarty-pants,” she writes. “Bush elicited self-recognition.” Yes, those sentences actually appear in this book, and yes, they seem to be Carlson’s explanation of Gore’s lousy coverage. “It’s not hard to dislike Bush’s policies, which favor the strong over the weak,” she writes. “But it is hard to dislike Bush.”

Carlson spends little time on those Bush policies, “which favor the strong over the weak.” By contrast—as noted in Thursday’s HOWLER—she spends lots of time complaining that the Clintons would subject her to tedious policy chatter. It is perfectly clear that “the goof-off in Carlson” has little interest in such major tedium. In India, she falls asleep when Mrs. Clinton limns health care, and she can’t understand why Candidate Bill Clinton, in 1992, would talk to her about welfare reform. Talking to Bush is much more fun. “As he propped his rolled-up sleeves on the seat back in front of me, his body leaning into the conversation, he waggled his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx, mugging across the aisle,” she relates. You’ll probably think that we’re being unfair. Read this book and you’ll see that we aren’t.

No, Carlson spends little time on Bush’s policies, though it’s clear who she thinks they favor. For example, she briefly mentions Bush’s legislative approach after the 2002 elections. “After his big win in the midterm elections in 2002,” she writes, “Bush lurched further in the direction of protecting those who have against those who don’t.” But she spends much more time discussing the way Bush provided better food on his plane. Mmmm! “There were Dove bars and designer water on demand,” she recalls, “and a bathroom stocked like Martha Stewart’s guest suite. Dinner at seven featured lobster ravioli.” Apparently, Bush’s policies reflect the tastes of “those that have” even when dinner bells chime.

FOER (2/14/00): This is the stuff journalists are not supposed to see—a strategy session on abortion, the mocking of opposing campaign staffs, the candidate stuffing Krispy Kremes into his mouth. But it's happening in plain sight, on John McCain's bus—the Straight Talk Express—as it barrels across the bogs of South Carolina. With reporters sitting cross-legged at his feet, the candidate returns a call from [RNC chairman] Jim Nicholson.