See How They Run: Electing the President in an Age of Mediaocracy by Paul Taylor

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Publishers Weekly

Washington Post reporter Taylor frames a lively journalistic account of the 1988 U.S. presidential race with introductory and closing chapters assessing the bankruptcy of our trivialized, hyper-televised election process. There are blistering profiles of Gary Hart (``a rebel without a cause''), Michael Dukakis (``simply the last white man standing when Jesse Jackson came crashing through the gates''), noncandidate Mario Cuomo (``full of himself''). Taylor questions Bush's ``contrived populism'' and weighs J. Danforth Quayle's ``unbearable lightness.'' His discussion of Jackson is grounded in an analysis of why racial issues have been ``off the national agenda'' since the 1960s. To raise the level of political discourse, Taylor proposes that each presidential candidate be granted five minutes of free time nightly on every TV and radio station in the country during the campaign's final weeks. Author tour. (Sept.)