Deadlines Past: Forty Years of Presidential Campaigning: A Reporter's Story

by Walter R. Mears

For a reporter, a presidential campaign is the Olympics of political coverage, and an assignment to cover it is a front-row ticket from the trial heats to the finals. I had tickets from 1960 until 2000." --Walter Mears Walter Mears had an insider's edge-and he made the most of it by serving newspapers and their readers around the country with some of the best presidential campaign coverage to see print. The Pulitzer Prize winner also witnessed enough...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0740738526
• ISBN13: 9780740738524
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Just what I was looking for

This book would best be enjoyed by people who enjoy history, politics and probably journalism. Being a young political activist and being fascinated by the current (2008) presidential primary, I wanted to explore past presidential races and contrast and compare... I ended up finding this book at the library and thought 'what the heck'. I'm glad I gave it a chance because it ended up being just what I was looking for. Walter Mears, a former AP newsman, wrote this book and it goes back forty years in history to the first presidential primary and general election he covered (Kennedy/Nixon) up until the 2000 election. It's clear the man knows what he's talking about. He gives all the interesting details one could want about the candidates and races and gives his observations (he had a front row seat at these races) but rarely (if ever) a partisan opinion. Being a strict partisan myself, I look for these things, but throughout the book, I just couldn't tell if he was for one candidate (or side) or another. It just doesn't enter into the equation. Which I appreciated. Sometimes, at the end of one's successful career, when the author writes a book, it's to extoll how great they were/are. Mears spent 40+ years as an AP newsman but rarely talks about his professional or personal life in this book. The focus is on the elections and it rarely strays. In writing this book, Mears didn't seek to immoralize himself, he clearly wrote it to give a written account of history. And I'm glad he did. He paints such vivid portraits of the candidates (Nixon, Carter and Clinton stick out in my head especially) that I felt I gained a wealth of insight from reading it.

A "front row seat" on 40 years of presidential campaigns

I recall reading and appreciating Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1960. Since then, I have read dozens of other books about that and subsequent campaigns as well as countless studies of those who have served as President. That said, I consider Mears's Deadlines Past among the most informative as well as most entertaining. In it, he examines his 40-year career as a reporter who rose within the ranks of the Associated Press organization, eventually serving as the AP's bureau chief in Washington. He retired after the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001. Of special significance to me is that he had a unique advantage over almost everyone else assigned to cover the White House and its most important occupant: Unlike counterparts from individual newspapers as well as radio and television networks, Mears represented a service organization which distributed reports to its subscribers throughout the world. As a result, the nature and extent of his access to the Oval Office were greater than almost any other journalist's. Here is a representative sample of what he observed and, more importantly, what he thought about a given politician, issue, or event. "Sometimes politicians do lie and misbehave, although probably no more often than people in business or lawyers or, for that matter, journalists. But most of the politicians I covered ran for office because they thoughts they could achieve change for the better, not purely for power and surely not for money, although wealth came to some of them because they held or had held office. That's not to say that they did not relish power. Power translates into the ability to do what a candidate believes should be done, and politicians are an ego-driven lot, out to sell themselves on the public stage in ways that would embarrass most of us." (page 25) In 1976, "...the improbable Democrat [Carter] beat the unelected Republican [Ford], but only narrowly. It was not surprising that Ford lost the 1976 election. That he came close to winning it was a political miracle for a humdrum Republican who had never run in an election outside of his Michigan congressional district, who came to the presidency because of his own party's scandal, and worsened his situation by Pardoning Nixon for Watergate crimes." (page 127) "There had been rumblings from [Quayle's] detractors about dumping him in 1992, but Bush decreed long in advance that Quayle would absolutely be on his ticket. He'd produced a dossier of gaffes as vice president. I thought he peaked with his contorted attempt to recite the slogan of the United Negro College Fund. `What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind, is being wasteful. How true it is." Yes, a mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste. His most convoluted sentences not withstanding, Quayle was no dummy. To borrow the line used against him in that 1988 debate: I knew Dan Quayle, Dan Quayle was a friend of mine. I thought he was a competent man and a competent senator w

Presidential Campaign Reporting At Its Best

I am a political junkie- I love to hear stories about politics and in particular the people involved. I live in New Hampshire where it used to be that every four years we would have a new Presidential campaign. Now, of course, the campaigns start as soon as the President is sworn into office. In a past life I wonder if I was a reporter on "the beat". Walter Mears tells his stories as an AP (Associated Press) reporter for the past 40 years. From 1955 until 2001 this man's words were seen daily in every American newspaper in the country. Thus he could be said to be the most influential political reporter of his time. He is in a sense the storyteller of the past. He tells the stories of the 11 presidential campaigns that he covered. He is a fascinating man, and I have read all the material available about him and his writing and speaking.Walter Mears graduated from Middlebury and got a job straight away with the AP. He started in Boston and reported from a pay phone that was reserved for bookies. He was soon asked to cover the Legislature in Montpelier, Vermont. He had no training, it was on the job. He was told to report on the Legislature and that is what he did. He said recently that the AP job in Vermont was the job he loved the most. He eventually moved to the big time in Washington, D.C. and it is there that he retired from the AP in 2001. In between, Walter Mears covered all the important campaigns of the past 45 years. He has stories of JF Kennedy- " that man kept his love life secret- there is no way that the press wouldn't have talked about it if we had known- it worked for him because he didn't let anybody know". The Nixon years, the Clinton years-Vietnam and Watergate changed attitudes about government coverage- it turned from skeptical trust to suspicion and cynicism. Bill Clinton made suspicion and trust of politicians worse by his misconduct and dishonesty. American citizens fed on the assumption that politicians are not to be trusted said Mears.In 1977 Walter Mears won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting of the 1976 Presidential Campaign. The day after he won, everyone gathered around him to see what he was going too write- as he said "The next story is the news".Walter Mears believes in his profession, loves it. His philosophy is "Let people know what is happening and then let them decide what to do about it." He loves the politicians he covers. He believes they are honest people, and they think they are doing good things whether they are or not. Walter Mears is a reporter who does not give biased, opininated news, and he is despondent over the news celebrities on the cable channels that think they are delivering news. This is one hell of a book. I enjoyed every page- the stories he tells and the times he has had. This man has lived his life doing what he loved! An admirable man and an admirable book. prisrob

Great chronicle of presidential politics

Walter Mears crafts a compelling look at presidential politics from Kennedy to George W. Bush. His story does not contain the level of ego found in other books, and his behind the scenes stories and insights, and the history of American presidential politics, are worth a read.