Friends and Sources
"A mile above sea level," reads the first awful sentence by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter in his prologue to this book, "the thin Denver air refreshed the throngs as they waited in the summer darkness for their man to ascend. It was an electric evening for a nation yearning to believe in something or someone again. Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for president on August 28, 2008, the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King's ‘I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial."
As far as we know, no loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitudes, no water changed to wine. But otherwise, the symbols are all there -- the adoring throngs, the mountaintop, the ascension -- and the tone is set.
Coyne also understands how the guild works and how it takes care of its own:
But don't cry for Jonathan Alter and Jon Meacham. As Patrick Gavin writes in Politico, Meacham "has the great fortune of being part of an elite club of journalists who take care of their own." He quotes Peter Mirijanian, a Washington crisis communications expert: "Within the fraternity and sorority that is the journalist corridor between New York and Washington, I think he's fine..." And so is Alter. After Game Change and The Bridge, his Promise is third in a series of at least three more Obama books this year by that "elite club" of journalist/writers, topping off with Bob Woodward, who creates great fictional characters and will find at least one Deep Throat in the administration, unnamed of course, to pass him secrets in an unlit parking garage.
The story will change, the plot thicken, and Alter will be kept in book contracts for a few more years -- at least up through Year Four -- thus continuing to ensure him a place beside Jon Meacham at Charley Rose's table.
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