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- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
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- Much like a strong presidential ticket, covering the White
- House for TIME requires teamwork, indefatigable energy and more
- than a dollop of personal chemistry. Which brings us to
- Washington correspondents Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame -- the
- Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of the presidential beat -- who
- have been covering the Bush Administration together since
- Inauguration Day 1989. At first glance, they are, well,
- different from each other: the voluble, wisecracking Duffy is
- the inside-the-Beltway political junkie, while Goodgame, a
- Mississippi native and Rhodes scholar, is the laid-back
- outsider, always searching for the Big Picture.
-
- Duffy and Goodgame were not immune to the primary
- occupational hazard of the White House beat: frustration with
- the steady diet of manufactured events. Amid the tedium of 1989,
- Duffy recalls, "we discovered that Bush was popular not despite
- his lack of action but because of it -- and what's more, we
- learned it was largely by design." From this insight grew the
- ultimate Duffy-Goodgame collaboration, their book chronicling
- Bush's first term, Marching in Place, just published by Simon
- & Schuster and excerpted in this preconvention issue.
-
- Collaborating on a book enhanced the week-to-week
- journalism of Duffy and Goodgame. Explains Goodgame: "It forced
- us to work far more closely together, sharing every detail,
- every interview, every hunch with each other." Working so
- closely also pointed up the odd-couple nature of the
- Duffy-Goodgame relationship. Duffy likes to write early and,
- when circumstances permit, quit early for a gourmet dinner like
- take-out pizza. In contrast, Goodgame does his best writing late
- at night, often after downing several bowls of his homemade
- seafood gumbo.
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- Fostering in-house book writers is a long TIME tradition.
- Assistant managing editor Walter Isaacson is the author of
- Kissinger: A Biography, which will be published by Simon &
- Schuster next month. Isaacson says, "Henry Kissinger was very
- generous in the time and access he gave me. But it's not an
- authorized biography, and indeed it's quite critical in places."
- This fall TIME reporter David Seideman will examine the
- spotted-owl environmental controversy in his forthcoming book
- Showdown at Opal Creek. Not all TIME authors compose weighty
- public-policy tomes. On a lighter note, senior writer William
- A. Henry III recently published The Great One: The Life and
- Legend of Jackie Gleason. And away we go.
-
- Elizabeth P. Valk
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