Winning a political campaign – for an office, or for a political proposition – requires a multi-layered communications effort to ensure that a majority of voters have a favorable understanding of either the candidate or the cause. This is not something new, but it has remained a strong, reliable tool on the road to election victory.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln penned several “reverse-ghostwriting” biographies to help his chances with different groups of electorates. He actually wrote these – he was a remarkable communicator and a gifted writer – but with the proviso that his role as “author” be kept confidential.
This was at a time when presidential candidates confined their electioneering to targeted letters and private face-to-face meetings. It was considered gauche for a candidate to campaign for himself. Because he was far from well-known outside of his native Illinois, these campaign bios proved decisive in his surprise victory. He may not have been the first, but he’s the first I have come across.
Knowing that he would run for president – not which party he’d run with, as he’d never “been political” before – but nonetheless certain that he’d run in 1952, General of the Army Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower wrote a classic military biography, Crusade in Europe.
Since this was not specifically or blatantly a “campaign book,” he was free to focus on his triumphant leadership of the Allied Armies, first in North Africa, then in Sicily and Italy, and finally in northwestern Europe following D-Day. And since his only credential for being president was his stellar leadership as the general who took his armies from the French coast at D-Day to central Germany at the time of the Nazi surrender.
This book not only earned him a significant royalty – it was a best-seller, and rightfully so – but it let potential voters realize how much leading an Army was like leading a country.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy – JFK – followed this pattern, writing Profiles in Courage, an excellent book filled with mini-biographies of eight U.S. Senators. At the time, JFK was a senator and wanted to establish that such individuals could become great leaders. He profiled eight senators who proved courageous in their own life struggles. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book was also a best-seller. It also made JFK a lot of money, not that he needed it, but it set up his victory over then-Vice President Richard Nixon.
Four years later, the Goldwater campaign used two books. A Texan Looks at Lyndon exposed Johnson’s corrupt political practices as a congressman and later as a senator representing Texas.
In 1964, the year he ran for election after taking over when JFK had been assassinated, this was the best-selling book in Texas except for the Holy Bible. The second book, A Choice, Not an Echo, by political activist Phyllis Schlafly, was self-published and sold three million copies. Anticipating Reagan’s presidency by sixteen years, Choice was used extensively by the Goldwater campaign to establish his political and philosophical credentials.
As an odd twist of fate, my first job involved me going door-to-door in Chicago suburb, passing out free copies of these books to anyone who’d take them. I was just thirteen, and by reading these books, I became politically – and conservatively – active in a way that reading Ike’s and JFK’s books had not done.
Some presidents don’t need such books – Reagan, for instance, had been speaking politically for twenty years, and had served two successful terms as governor of California.
But a young senator from Illinois found that writing his political and personal biographies could make him a millionaire while propelling him to the White House. These books include: Dreams of my Father (2004) and The Audacity of Hope (2008). The first helped position himself as more than a first-term senator while the second was essentially a campaign manifesto, spelling out his political philosophy and leadership priorities. And, as noted, they made Obama a millionaire. Since his retirement, A Promised Land (2020), earned him many millions of dollars, and countered some of the post-presidential criticism he received.
In the campaign just recently completed, Trump – well-known to every voter, for good or ill – didn’t need a campaign book. However, this was more than made up for by his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, who wrote and published Hillbilly Elegy – A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis in 2016, long before he became senator from Ohio, let alone the vice president-elect. It was then made into a movie, Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard, starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams and produced in 2020. While not intended as a campaign biography, this best-selling book certainly served in that role. Like Obama and others, this book was also financially significant to J.D. Vance, in his run for the Senate from Ohio, and from his run for vice president earlier this year.
Kamala Harris did write a campaign book, The Truths We Hold – An American Journey (2019), this book was widely panned by critics for her lack of writing style and the book’s lack of literary merit or campaign merit. It didn’t do much for her aborted first campaign for president in 2019-20. Since then, she didn’t have time to produce a new addition once she was elevated to the Democrat party’s presidential nomination. Her original edition did not receive many favorable reviews, especially in comparison to Obama’s books, he being a superb communicator, a gift Harris doesn’t share.
However, Harris did win one recognition that Obama was spared from. This book, plus her 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, was found to be rife with plagiarism, a flaw also found in her 2007 testimony before Congress. Never known for her truthfulness during her campaign, these proven charges of plagiarism did little to help her campaigns. Nonetheless, due to low expectations, the books did not seem to materially hurt her efforts to seek higher office. She did that all by herself.
Beyond these, many candidates for national, state and local political positions – as well as advocates for specific causes or propositions – have written (or, more likely, ghostwritten) books used to help establish their credentials in advance of running for political office. Even in the digital age, the essence of a book – it’s substantial and appears to have some financial value – is useful, especially when reaching voters who care about political platforms, or helping both the voters and the media know who this new-to-them candidate really is. While some of these became best-sellers – see Obama, specifically – typically the political campaign bio is written for reasons other than profitability.
However, perhaps only one in ten politicians has the skill to write a campaign bio that blends personal history (with a focus on things that will attract some voters) with a political history, highlighting the kinds of issues a candidate might embrace. For these, there is an alternative – a ghostwriter. This is a person who will interview the named author, research his or her history, political preferences and issues he or she seeks to build a campaign around. A great ghostwriter knows how to write a compelling, entertaining and easily readable book. I’m no fan of Obama’s politically, but if he had a ghostwriter – a question “closely held” by those who know, but who aren’t talking – he certainly had a great ghostwriter.
Having the book written and published – and in a timely fashion – is the first step toward using it as a campaign tool. The next step is to launch the book before the campaign has geared up, if only because campaigns suck all of the oxygen out of the atmosphere around a candidate. With a book in hand and a good publicist, the “author” will do a book tour, focusing on visual and auditory news platforms, but without overlooking the print environment. For conservatives, Regnery frequently publishes politicians’ campaign bios, as long as there is sufficient lead-time, for once a campaign heats up, day-to-day changes can really screw with a book’s success.
For instance, in advance of the 2008 election, I represented a political book that was – sadly – a conservative hit piece against Mitt Romney. However, the day we launched that book was also the day after Romney’d lost a major primary, essentially ending his political career for 2008. Four years later, when he ran against Obama, the book was old news and had no impact on that election.
A timely book, well-written, can lead the “author” (the candidate) on a tour before he or she announces for an upcoming election. In this way, the book gains credibility and can start having impact as the primary season cranks up. It will then, during the campaign, become a fund-raising tool as well. It’s amazing how many thousand-dollar contributions you can raise by offering an autographed copy of the candidate’s campaign book, making it both profitable and useful in the campaign.
A campaign book needs to be focused – on the individual, or the issues. If it needs both, the author needs to know how to write such a book. He or she must have a keen grasp of the issues, as well as a reporter’s skill in interviewing the named author, to ensure that both political passion and humanity shine through.
If you want to run for office – or if you have an issue you’d like to “make political” for the next election season, a campaign book is a tremendous investment in potential success.
Ned Barnett, a conservative political activist, has been a ghostwriter for campaigns as well as an “as told to” biographer for controversial public figures. Beginning as a speechwriter, he moved into campaign bio mode in the 1976 campaign for Ford in South Carolina, and continues to help clients with their campaign bios and other campaign strategies and tactics. He can be reached at nedbarnett51@gmail.com or 702-561-1167.
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