MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  There is a place where politicians can spin fluffy yarns without having to worry about being fact checked, in the celebrated literary genre of the campaign memoir. This week, Elizabeth Warren released a memoir called A Fighting Chance, chronicling her unlikely rise from hardscrabble Oklahoma City to Harvard Law School and the US Senate. Hillary Clinton's upcoming book, Hard Choices, promises, quote, “Candid reflections about key moments during her time as Secretary of State.”

Even fictional Vice President Selina Meyer, on the HBO series Veep, has entered the fray.

  [CLIP]:

BEN:  “New Beginnings:  Our Next American Journey.”

VP SELENA:  What do you think of that title?

BEN:  Well, it’s so full of sh__[BLEEP] there’s a, a colon right smack dab in the middle!

VP SELENA:  Oh God, they kept coming up with all of these awful titles, you wouldn’t even have believed it, like, “Footsteps to the Future” was one, [LAUGHS] “Red, White and You.”

BEN:  Oh!

VP SELENA:  - was actually another one, yes - “Hands of Our Children.”

BEN:  What?

VP SELENA:  Like a massacre or something.

BEN:  [BLEEP]’s sake!

VP SELENA:  I know.

  [END CLIP]

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  As Casey Cep writes in Politico Magazine, “Penning a memoir has become de rigueur for political hopefuls looking to energize voters.” But she says the books themselves have the authenticity and literary gravitas of the Wizard of Oz.

CASEY CEP:  This idea of the Yellow Brick Road, where heartless prose, brainless policy prescription and cowardly confession meet.

  [ZOMODODI LAUGHS]

It’s an exercise in saying a lot without saying very much.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  And one of the ones that people usually say that they liked was The Audacity of Hope, of course, Barack Obama's book. Does that fit into this genre?

CASEY CEP:  You know, you’re looking at an extended version of what became his campaign stump speech.

  [CLIP]:

BARACK OBAMA:  There was and always had been another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glories of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in each another and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart.

  [END CLIP]

CASEY CEP:  Rather than deal in fine point political recommendations or rather than address specific issues from his run for State Senate, what you have is this kind of broad smarmy look at the American political landscape. I actually think Dreams from my Father is the better book.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  That's so sad. You can go from being like a great writer to being sort of a crappy one simply because you have political ambition.

CASEY CEP:  Sure, there’s a lot on the line, and I think it's, it's really dangerous to be too candid about yourself or your own ideas for the country.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Okay, here’s Mitt Romney, reading from his memoir, No Apology:  The Case for American Greatness.

  [CLIP]:

MITT ROMNEY:  Running for President of the United States is an extraordinary experience. New profound friendships are unquestionably the greatest reward. They will last a lifetime. And there were moments of laughter, such as when Ann got up from a collapsed stage in Dubuque, Iowa, dusted herself off and later adlibbed, “Well, I fell on da butt in Dubuque.”

  [END CLIP]

CASEY CEP:  I, I might have underestimated the virtues of the audio books. You know, you can torture political reporters with them. One of my favorites is this peculiar section in Charlie Crist’s book, where he chooses to make this incredibly metaphoric moment out of the hug he shared with President Obama, and he says, “We shook hands. The new president leaned forward and gave me a hug. Reach. Pull. Release." It’s just laughable. You know, my goodness, who – who knew so much depended on a hug.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Well, you know, he got a whole like half page out of that moment, right?

CASEY CEP:  Yeah, exactly. [LAUGHS] And you – then you begin to see that, you know, years and years of public service can be reduced to these kind of silly paragraphs about irrepresentative moments.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  But bad writing or not, Casey, there’s still big money involved for the politicians. The advances are still huge, right?

CASEY CEP:  Sure. If they’re famous enough to be offered an advance, you’re talking six figures. So, you know, Sarah Palin’s was a little larger than most, 1.25 million. Somebody like Scott Brown got 700,000, Marco Rubio 800,000.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  I mean, and part of me says, you know, what’s wrong with that? These are people who have given their lives to public service. They should be given the opportunity to make some real money, since they’re – they’re probably being paid less than they would be paid if they were working for a corporation or something.

CASEY CEP:  Sure and I, I absolutely think we should hear reflections on public life. I just don’t think that’s what these books have actually come to be. So beyond that advance, you know, there’s money involved throughout the process. They get the advance. They’re able to sell their political list to promote the book. Their political action committees buy copies to take it to the top of the bestseller list. They use the copies they’ve bought to incentivize donations to the PACs. And then the book tour becomes just an exercise in earned media. You have a way of spending, you know, two to four weeks on the campaign trail but expensing it in a new way because it’s for the book tour.

So, you know, you’ve exhausted coverage on the political page and then suddenly you’re getting book reviews in the Arts and Culture section, local papers are covering every reading. That's a – you know, a whole new audience of people you can talk to.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  How much do the books end up being sort of a playbook for the campaign itself, that it gives them the opportunity to say, you know, if they’re ever asked a hard question, “It’s in my book”?

CASEY CEP:  I think it happens pretty often. I think really the best example, Marco Rubio, An American Son, so it comes out in 2013. It’s clearly in anticipation of what might later be a, a national run. And there, there are very serious allegations in his past about the abuse of campaign funds and misuse of party credit cards, and it's dismissed with a sentence. And, you know, the sentence is, “For much of my political career I was young, very busy, very inexperienced and sometimes I was sloppy.” Well, that’s not a sufficient explanation, and it's one that we shouldn't accept in future campaigns. But by saying, “I addressed those recordkeeping issues in my memoir,” the press moves on.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  In terms of looking at the history of literary genres, this is a relatively new one, right? Would our founding fathers, have dreamt of writing campaign memoirs?

CASEY CEP:  [LAUGHS] No. I mean, Lincoln at one point during the campaign was, was asked by someone else who was working on a biography to talk about his childhood, and he really dismissed the idea that there was anything worth talking about, much less that he would have written about it. The Renaissance comes in 1976. Jimmy Carter, who’s obviously, you know, well known in Georgia but not yet a viable national candidate, he wrote a memoir, Why Not the Best? So the book comes out and it’s actually a great vehicle for launching his story. Since then you, you can't stop these folks from writing books.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  You know, Jimmy Carter, it was the peanut farmer that made him –

CASEY CEP:  Right.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  - accessible to people. You know, they want to hear the little personal anecdotes, the falling on the da butt in Dubuque, that that’s what they want, right? It’s those little morsels of humanity.

CASEY CEP:  I’m not sure it's what anyone wants, but it certainly fills air time, so it's, it's understandable how they come to be. I mean, I would say, try for Dreams for My Father. There’s a reason that book will be read many years after President Obama's presidency. So I would say, you know, if you can't do it, find the ghost writer who helps you actually confront your personhood. Make it a reflection on your life, what you've done, what you've already accomplished. Those are the things, I think, that help us make sense of who these people are, and, and that’s what we want from these books.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Casey, thanks so much.

CASEY CEP:  Sure.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern shore of Maryland. She wrote about bad campaign memoirs in Politico Magazine.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  There is a place where politicians can spin fluffy yarns without having to worry about being fact checked, in the celebrated literary genre of the campaign memoir. This week, Elizabeth Warren released a memoir called A Fighting Chance, chronicling her unlikely rise from hardscrabble Oklahoma City to Harvard Law School and the US Senate. Hillary Clinton's upcoming book, Hard Choices, promises, quote, “Candid reflections about key moments during her time as Secretary of State.”

Even fictional Vice President Selina Meyer, on the HBO series Veep, has entered the fray.

  [CLIP]:

BEN:  “New Beginnings:  Our Next American Journey.”

VP SELENA:  What do you think of that title?

BEN:  Well, it’s so full of sh__[BLEEP] there’s a, a colon right smack dab in the middle!

VP SELENA:  Oh God, they kept coming up with all of these awful titles, you wouldn’t even have believed it, like, “Footsteps to the Future” was one, [LAUGHS] “Red, White and You.”

BEN:  Oh!

VP SELENA:  - was actually another one, yes - “Hands of Our Children.”

BEN:  What?

VP SELENA:  Like a massacre or something.

BEN:  [BLEEP]’s sake!

VP SELENA:  I know.

  [END CLIP]

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  As Casey Cep writes in Politico Magazine, “Penning a memoir has become de rigueur for political hopefuls looking to energize voters.” But she says the books themselves have the authenticity and literary gravitas of the Wizard of Oz.

CASEY CEP:  This idea of the Yellow Brick Road, where heartless prose, brainless policy prescription and cowardly confession meet.

  [ZOMODODI LAUGHS]

It’s an exercise in saying a lot without saying very much.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  And one of the ones that people usually say that they liked was The Audacity of Hope, of course, Barack Obama's book. Does that fit into this genre?

CASEY CEP:  You know, you’re looking at an extended version of what became his campaign stump speech.

  [CLIP]:

BARACK OBAMA:  There was and always had been another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glories of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in each another and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart.

  [END CLIP]

CASEY CEP:  Rather than deal in fine point political recommendations or rather than address specific issues from his run for State Senate, what you have is this kind of broad smarmy look at the American political landscape. I actually think Dreams from my Father is the better book.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  That's so sad. You can go from being like a great writer to being sort of a crappy one simply because you have political ambition.

CASEY CEP:  Sure, there’s a lot on the line, and I think it's, it's really dangerous to be too candid about yourself or your own ideas for the country.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Okay, here’s Mitt Romney, reading from his memoir, No Apology:  The Case for American Greatness.

  [CLIP]:

MITT ROMNEY:  Running for President of the United States is an extraordinary experience. New profound friendships are unquestionably the greatest reward. They will last a lifetime. And there were moments of laughter, such as when Ann got up from a collapsed stage in Dubuque, Iowa, dusted herself off and later adlibbed, “Well, I fell on da butt in Dubuque.”

  [END CLIP]

CASEY CEP:  I, I might have underestimated the virtues of the audio books. You know, you can torture political reporters with them. One of my favorites is this peculiar section in Charlie Crist’s book, where he chooses to make this incredibly metaphoric moment out of the hug he shared with President Obama, and he says, “We shook hands. The new president leaned forward and gave me a hug. Reach. Pull. Release." It’s just laughable. You know, my goodness, who – who knew so much depended on a hug.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Well, you know, he got a whole like half page out of that moment, right?

CASEY CEP:  Yeah, exactly. [LAUGHS] And you – then you begin to see that, you know, years and years of public service can be reduced to these kind of silly paragraphs about irrepresentative moments.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  But bad writing or not, Casey, there’s still big money involved for the politicians. The advances are still huge, right?

CASEY CEP:  Sure. If they’re famous enough to be offered an advance, you’re talking six figures. So, you know, Sarah Palin’s was a little larger than most, 1.25 million. Somebody like Scott Brown got 700,000, Marco Rubio 800,000.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  I mean, and part of me says, you know, what’s wrong with that? These are people who have given their lives to public service. They should be given the opportunity to make some real money, since they’re – they’re probably being paid less than they would be paid if they were working for a corporation or something.

CASEY CEP:  Sure and I, I absolutely think we should hear reflections on public life. I just don’t think that’s what these books have actually come to be. So beyond that advance, you know, there’s money involved throughout the process. They get the advance. They’re able to sell their political list to promote the book. Their political action committees buy copies to take it to the top of the bestseller list. They use the copies they’ve bought to incentivize donations to the PACs. And then the book tour becomes just an exercise in earned media. You have a way of spending, you know, two to four weeks on the campaign trail but expensing it in a new way because it’s for the book tour.

So, you know, you’ve exhausted coverage on the political page and then suddenly you’re getting book reviews in the Arts and Culture section, local papers are covering every reading. That's a – you know, a whole new audience of people you can talk to.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  How much do the books end up being sort of a playbook for the campaign itself, that it gives them the opportunity to say, you know, if they’re ever asked a hard question, “It’s in my book”?

CASEY CEP:  I think it happens pretty often. I think really the best example, Marco Rubio, An American Son, so it comes out in 2013. It’s clearly in anticipation of what might later be a, a national run. And there, there are very serious allegations in his past about the abuse of campaign funds and misuse of party credit cards, and it's dismissed with a sentence. And, you know, the sentence is, “For much of my political career I was young, very busy, very inexperienced and sometimes I was sloppy.” Well, that’s not a sufficient explanation, and it's one that we shouldn't accept in future campaigns. But by saying, “I addressed those recordkeeping issues in my memoir,” the press moves on.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  In terms of looking at the history of literary genres, this is a relatively new one, right? Would our founding fathers, have dreamt of writing campaign memoirs?

CASEY CEP:  [LAUGHS] No. I mean, Lincoln at one point during the campaign was, was asked by someone else who was working on a biography to talk about his childhood, and he really dismissed the idea that there was anything worth talking about, much less that he would have written about it. The Renaissance comes in 1976. Jimmy Carter, who’s obviously, you know, well known in Georgia but not yet a viable national candidate, he wrote a memoir, Why Not the Best? So the book comes out and it’s actually a great vehicle for launching his story. Since then you, you can't stop these folks from writing books.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  You know, Jimmy Carter, it was the peanut farmer that made him –

CASEY CEP:  Right.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  - accessible to people. You know, they want to hear the little personal anecdotes, the falling on the da butt in Dubuque, that that’s what they want, right? It’s those little morsels of humanity.

CASEY CEP:  I’m not sure it's what anyone wants, but it certainly fills air time, so it's, it's understandable how they come to be. I mean, I would say, try for Dreams for My Father. There’s a reason that book will be read many years after President Obama's presidency. So I would say, you know, if you can't do it, find the ghost writer who helps you actually confront your personhood. Make it a reflection on your life, what you've done, what you've already accomplished. Those are the things, I think, that help us make sense of who these people are, and, and that’s what we want from these books.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Casey, thanks so much.

CASEY CEP:  Sure.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI:  Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern shore of Maryland. She wrote about bad campaign memoirs in Politico Magazine.