Chronicles from our rickety democratic experiment

Carlos Lozada has made a career of reading and dissecting the print output of our political system, first at the Washington Post, now at the New York Times. Whenever I see his byline, I'll jump to take a look. I find his work almost invariably interesting. In The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians, he assembles a collection he considers enduringly relevant to his readers.

I'm a Washington journalist, but I don't interview politicians or cover foreign policy. I don't report on Congress or break news about government agencies. I don't dig up classified documents, and I certainly don't meet secret sources in parking garages.

Instead, I read.

He explains why he thinks there is value in the exercise:

... here's the real reason to read these books no matter how carefully these politicians sanitize their experiences and positions and records, no matter how diligently they present themselves in the best and safest most electable or confirmable light -- they almost always end up revealing themselves. Whether they mean to or not, in their books, they tell us who they really are.

Well, at least they do to Lozada, their diligent reader, who extracts a picture of who they really might be. He has a wonderful knack for the telling detail -- or excision -- from self-aggrandizing narrative. He shares his methods:

When you're reading a Washington book, you must look for the go-to lines, the rhetorical crutches that politicians lean on. ...

... Remember, it's only when life is wretched that presidents reach for Lincoln. In good times, no one gives a damn about our better angels.

... always read the acknowledgments section. That is where politicians disclose their debts, scratch backs, suck up, and snub. ...

Lozada follows this with an example of the fruits of such careful reading which also reveals what makes this volume so occasionally delicious; he excels at snark.

By far my favorite acknowledgments moment in a political book comes in American Dreams, the 2015 memoir by Sen. Marco Rubio. The first person that Rubio thanks by name is "my Lord, Jesus Christ, whose willingness to suffer and die for my sins will allow me to enjoy eternal life."

The second person Rubio thanks? "My very wise lawyer Bob Barnett."

But, more seriously, take this bit discussing the Congressional January 6 report:

That Trump would rile people up and then sit back and watch the outcome on television was the least surprising part of the day. It was how he spent his presidency. ...

Or this:

In retrospect, the Mueller Report was a cry for help. ...

Having actually made myself read that long volume, I could not agree more.

More of 2024, there's this which calls for believing what pols tell us:

The contrast between Biden saying America is still a democracy and Trump vowing to make it great again is more than a quirk of speechwriting. What presidents say -- especially what they grow comfortable repeating -- can reveal their underlying beliefs and impulses, shaping their administrations in ways that are concrete, not just rhetorical. Biden's "still" stresses durability; Trump's "again" revels in discontinuity. "Still" is about holding on to something good that may be slipping away; "again"  is about bringing back something better that was wrested away. ...

I would not suggest reading this volume the way I did, under the pressure of a library deadline. The episodic essays deserve to be savored. You won't like all of them, but Lozada has invented a fascinating role for a journalist. He's a lapidary stylist. Enjoy.