How Power Works in Washington
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Hedrick Smith's The Power Game is an account of how power works in Washington. Smith's purpose is to present what he learned during his years as the New York Times' Washington bureau chief and chief Washington correspondent, then to analyze the power "game" as it was played during the Reagan years showing "how it could work better" (xxii). Smith's goal is "to take you inside each part of the political process in Washington and to show you how it works" and his "premise" is that power games in Washington "have unwritten rules, rituals, and patterns that explain why things so often happen the way they do" (xv). All these maneuvers and strategies are, however, as old as the Greeks (and probably older). Even if there are some new twists, such as television's influence or the rise of female players in the front lines, Smith clearly thinks that his readers will be overcome by the surprise of it all. What is surprising is that while Smith's book turns out to be lively, engrossing, and filled with entertaining (but repetitive) examples (stressing the 'insider's' point of view), his analysis is naive and uninteresting. Part of the problem is that Smith's approach is journalistic gossip. It is informative and the stories can be illuminating, but they carry the burden of his argument and he is not at all systematic in his approach. He writes well and every episode connects with the reader, but he does very little with the ramifications of the stories--simply setting them up as
. . .
events or not. To take one example, Smith recounts the story of Nancy Reagan's self-parodying appearance at a Gridiron Club dinner (a private "roast" affair about which, it is understood, the press always remains silent). At the beginning of his story the origin of the scheme is described in quotes taken from an interview with Reagan advisor Sheila Tate who "later explained" the beginning of the idea to Smith (394). Her explanation is then given a note with the date of the interview. Following that note, however, Smith goes on to give an elaborate, detailed account of the appearance at the Club, but never offers any evidence of whether it is a first-hand account or if the reader is simply being given more material from the Tate interview. This loose approach to sources is bad enough. But it is Smith's strange view of the press that is most disturbing. The self-mocking Reagan appearance at the Gridiron supplies a further example:
[the story] remained unreported. Only the inner core of the Washington community had seen this side of Mrs. Reagan. But that community included most of the important journalists and politicians [and] Mrs. Reagan's image had been remade in a few short minutes. Inside the beltway, people talked wi
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Approximate Word count = 2255
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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