title: See How They Run: Electing the President in an Age of Mediaocracy
author:  Paul Taylor 
description: Washington Post reporter Taylor frames a lively journalistic account of the 1988 U.S. presidential race with introductory and closing chapters assessing the bankruptcy of our trivialized, hyper-televised election process. There are blistering profiles of Gary Hart ("a rebel without a cause"), Michael Dukakis ("simply the last white man standing when Jesse Jackson came crashing through the gates"), noncandidate Mario Cuomo ("full of himself"). Taylor questions Bush's "contrived populism" and weighs J. Danforth Quayle's "unbearable lightness." His discussion of Jackson is grounded in an analysis of why racial issues have been "off the national agenda" since the 1960s. To raise the level of political discourse, Taylor proposes that each presidential candidate be granted five minutes of free time nightly on every TV and radio station in the country during the campaign's final weeks. Author tour. <BR>Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  The Seventy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  Introduction
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was last March that our small group realized we were in for a historic
  ride. The four years of vitriol being thrown around had us worked up, and
  there were some interesting aspects in the 2016 election that lingered. The
  disparagement of a President with that intensity was something I had never
  seen. This was a historic event, and was bigger than anything we thought. A
  lot bigger. It was so big, in fact, that once the 2020 election was sort of
  decided that the people who did it had a desire to tell everyone how they did
  it. Our first undisputed look was in a fascinating article in Time Magazine by
  a journalist named Molly Ball. Maybe “publicist” is a better term, bu