A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist credited with inventing the genre
of the modern presidential campaign book told a close friend in a 1960
letter that all of politics is a fraud, but that he played along
—endorsing it to the public—because he felt compelled to.
Jon Schwarz reported on the letter, written by Theodore H. White, at The Intercept’s Unofficial Sources
blog. Schwarz gives a sketch of the stance White took in public by
quoting from the first pages of White’s book, “The Making of the
President, 1960.” White wrote:
I owe two general acknowledgments:
First, to the politicians of America — men whom I have found over the
long years the pleasantest, shrewdest and generally the most honorable
of companions …
Second, I must thank my comrades of the press — whose reporting at
every level of America politics purifies, protects and refreshes our
system from year to year.
Author Theodore H. White poses in his New York City apartment with the book that won him the Pulitzer Prize, May 7, 1962. (AP)
