KNOWING THE PRESIDENT - THE DIALOGIC EVOLUTION OF THE CAMPAIGN HISTORY

Since its inception in 1961, the campaign history has become an import ant, recurring feature of the political landscape. This essay traces t he development of the genre by exploring two key exemplars: Theodore H . White's The Making of the President 1960 and Richard Ben Cramer's Wh at It Takes: The Way to the White House. Critique of the genre reveals that the books make sense of the election, develop a reciprocal relat ionship between private man and public figure, and create an authorita rian reading of the election. The evolution of the campaign history fr ont White's epic narrative of the Kennedy campaign to Cramer's dialogi c depiction of a political culture suggests the ways in which American political discourse has begun to reinvent itself for contemporary soc iety.