RUNNING ON RACE: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960–2000

"Race and the array of issues surrounding it have been crucial to every presidential election since 1960," Mayer states, an obvious but routinely ignored fact that he documents campaign by campaign. The first campaign he focuses on offers a lucid, shocking reminder of Kennedy's pre-1960 courting of Southern segregationists, and Mayer her sets a standard that subsequent chapters fail to meet. He clearly delineates a pattern: except for 1964, "Democrats won only when they emulated Kennedy's calculated and symbolic outreach to racial conservatives," thus submerging the salience of race, provided Republicans let them. Yet, the ways this pattern played out—including primaries and third-party runs—and the ways issues changed over time, prevent this simple formula from producing cookie-cutter results. However, Mayer's accomplishment is marred by the increasing superficiality of his analysis as pre-1965 definitions of what constitutes racism become irrelevant, and no substantive discussion of emerging issues ensues. Thus, affirmative action as an issue recurs repeatedly, without any discussion of how it has actually functioned, both as a matter of law and fact. The same is true of busing—it's a startling exception when Mayer notes that the 1984 Reagan campaign attack on busing in Charlotte, N.C., backfired because "the community was relatively proud of their record on busing by 1984." His reportage also declines—his portrait of Jesse Jackson is as simplistic and distorted as his portrait of JFK is nuanced and complex. Mayer, a political scientist and visiting professor at Georgetown, offers a plausible yet disappointing exploration of an intriguing and accurate premise. Illus. not seen (On sale Aug. 20)

Forecast:With its controversial subject matter, this will no doubt get reviews and sales, but readers savvy about race and politics will stick with Kenneth O'Reilly's more substantial Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton. (1995)