Volume 35, Number 7 · April 28, 1988
More Than a Game
By Garry Wills
The Power Game: How Washington Really Works
by Hedrick Smith
Random House, 793 pp., $22.50
Hedrick Smith's book is a laundry bag trying to be a statue. The laundry bag is chock-full of good things, but attempts to impose shape on it keep collapsing. The entire book is based on a metaphor, and Hedrick Smith, the brilliant reporter for The New York Times, is not very good at metaphor. He is, to start with, always mixing them. 'The second major incident that stepped on the Reagan parade in 1981, and nearly derailed it, was another self-inflicted wound.' Bitburg becomes an unguent-producing tree in Gilead when Reagan goes there to 'heal the wound of Normandy and to nourish the balm of Verdun.' 'Fragmentation often leaves our politicians wallowing in deadlock.' It is hard to describe the Washington game when one is constantly changing games in midsentence: 'Access, especially the exclusive access that blindsides other players in the policy game, is a trump card.'
Review, 2377 words
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