I am, I admit, jealous of Mark Warren.
The Esquire executive editor snagged the book-writing challenge that anyone who has covered Nevada politics should covet: Helping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pen his autobiography.
There are few Nevada political figures who are worthy of the investment of time for a tell-all book. But Reid — whose variegated life has included years in an oppressive mining town called Searchlight, more than one near-political death and scrapes with organized crime that could have resulted in actual death — surely is one.
After finishing “The Good Fight,” though, I feel what must be Warren’s frustration, maybe more so because I have known him so long and thus longed for more. This 291-page volume is a tell-little book, chock-full as it is of fascinating tidbits and vignettes. For a man known to extemporize in public as his staff cringes, Reid doesn’t say much here that doesn’t seem carefully considered, with details purposefully included and excised. This is a fuller version of Harry Reid than the world knows, but it still feels truncated, like a typical phone conversation with the senator that suddenly ends without his saying goodbye.
Oh, there is much to recommend in the book, subtitled, “Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington.” The story of the boy who sprang from a “There Will Be Blood” childhood to become the state’s highest-ranking and arguably most powerful elected official in its history cannot help but have its compelling aspects. And Reid does pull back the curtain on critical political machinations, from his wooing of Jim Jeffords to upset the balance of power to his duel with Bill Frist over the “nuclear option.”
Warren has perfectly captured Reid’s disjointed, episodic speaking style, leaving nearly all of the tales feeling unfinished, as if the senator has left out the best parts. Isn’t that just like the cagiest pol I have covered in more than two decades?
But as much as this mosaic of a life has many noticeable gaps, it also has memorable and thoughtful passages that would seem — and everything with the ever-masked Harry Reid can only be said to “seem” — indicative of strongly held beliefs.
Reid’s animus toward the president is well-known. But Reid exposes, through his interactions with Bush, why he believes he “will rank among the worst presidents — if not the worst — in the history of our country. He has been bad for America and for the world. And he will leave severe, long-term damage in his wake.”
If I were the president, I’d rather be called a liar or a loser than have that description in a book. Reid goes on to fillet the sitting president for “getting us entangled in a needless war, in the wrong country, under false pretenses” to “perhaps the most troubling development of all, his government has devised a theory of executive power that is so thoroughly unconstitutional and so un-American that it may take years after Bush and Cheney are finally gone to fully expunge its effects from our national affairs.”
Agree or disagree, that is powerfully and passionately expressed. I dwell on that passage because it contrasts so much with most of the book, with a few exceptions that include a near-apologia on his Iraq vote, the frightening revelation that onetime-Rep. Walter Baring said it was “probably a good thing” JFK was assassinated and a stunning and detailed description of a meeting with a patronizing Donald Rumsfeld.
Reid, though, also writes that Bill Clinton’s presidency was “one of the best ever” and that Nancy Pelosi “is the best among” the speakers he has known. He also glosses over the allegations that he was the “Cleanface” on mob wiretaps, calling it the “worst time in my family’s life.”
The senator simply tells us; he does not show.
This is my frustration with “The Good Fight.” Reid tells about his unusual friendship with Sen. John Ensign, but does not show how it developed after the ugliness of their 1998 race. He tells how he and the master behind-the-scenes player Jay Brown came to know each other but then shows us little insight into how that relationship became one of the most important and controversial of his life.
Some opinions are omitted because of political timing — his feelings about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But Reid also seems to have left out a large part of himself — the Machiavellian political manipulator whose maneuvers have grazed or scarred many, many Nevada politicians of both parties. No elected official I know inspires fear as does Harry Reid and few have engendered the kind of visceral antipathy he has from people in Nevada, a guttural hatred that has followed him to the national scene as he has become an immensely polarizing figure.
Every human is complex to an extent, and Reid is no different. The man who revels in being plain-spoken probably keeps more secrets behind that wry smile than anyone I know.
So I didn’t expect to see much beyond the tip of the Reid iceberg. Such is the nature of “The Good Fight.” It is as if we have been given a puzzle to put together, but when we place the last piece, it’s clear many are missing, making it difficult to discern a complete picture, to understand exactly why he has been so remarkably successful.
But that can easily be remedied. Toward the end, Reid writes: “It is mighty hard to do justice to something like a life in something like a book, but I have done my best to put down what I thought most belonged here, and what I have left out would fill several books more.”
Let me know when you want to get started on the next one, Senator.
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