One is his funny and biting debut novel. Washington Monthly This is the article that convinced Charlie Peters to hire him. The article is about how close he was in the House primary and what he learned from actually being a candidate, something that few other “political analysts” have done. Sample writes this in the context of “Stumpien” narrowly defeating him:
At the Monroe County Fair, I met a mother and her 4-year-old son, excitedly holding aloft a red “Stempien To Congress” balloon.
I quietly ignored the balloon and introduced myself as a congressional candidate. The boy looked up, pointed at the balloon and asked, “Is that yours?” When I shook my head, the boy let go of the red helium balloon and said, “I like you better.”
The other is Walter’s excellent 2004 book. 1 car caravanis a book about what politics is like in the early stages of a primary election — before the first votes are cast, before the candidates and contenders are sorted, and when the committed, serious candidates are facing voters and a small corps of reporters. I’ve always thought it deserved a place as a campaign classic alongside better-known works like Richard Ben Kramer’s “The Politics of the President.” What do you need? Or Timothy Close’s Boys on the busOr Theodore White’s Genre Creation Birth of a President series.
What distinguishes Walter’s opinion, in this book and many others, is his generous but unsentimental love for the candidates and their hard work, for the absurd and flawed electoral process, for the voters (most of them) trying to find the right path, for the flawed press, for the full extent of American democracy’s operationalization, and for America itself.
