All Too Human: A Political Education
   George Stephanopoulos
  1999 Little, Brown & Co. Boston USA
   ISBN: 0316929190


In this rite-of-passage memoir, a president's senior advisor, learns the price of glory & power inside the labyrinth of politics. His elan, skills & ethics are honed & tested as he assists in winning the White House for his candidate & surviving the gossip, obfuscations & associations once there.

George Stephanopoulos thinks & writes with lucid, personable skill. I've seen him on ABC's This Week & can hear his voice speaking this book into existence. It's a fast, informative, frequently breathtaking rendition of an illusory era.

I see an ardent young man from a noble & proud minority, knowing what he didn't want to do with his life, stepping eagerly forward as opportunities presented themselves - mostly in support of politicians. This Rhodes Scholar thinks on his feet, stops on a dime & sees through everything...except the house of mirrors called power.

While I got a clear message of a young person not out to gain personal power, in fact when he had it he faltered; what I saw as I read deeper into this panting-paced recollection was:- a squire in search of a knight in shining armor. What he got was William Jefferson Clinton.

That George Stephanopoulos emerges from five of the most exhilarating, exhausting & excruciating years of his life with virtue intact, as it were, is due entirely to his daemon. That daemon is seen throughout All Too Human, whispering in his ear in the form of an inner dialogue that made it all too human indeed.

Whatever I might think of the cesspool into which George strode with his intentions all bright & shiny, willing & able to get the job done - we wouldn't have gotten this book out of him had he taken the lesser, the cleaner, the safer path forward.

George Stephanopoulos' All Too Human is no laughing matter & no tragedy either. It's a fascinating plunge into a nest of vipers, with familiar names weaving in & out, inside glimpses of heady events & passing comments about things that later would occupy our media ad nauseam.

And so it was, of course, that I ended up skimming parts because the details hadn't interested me the first time around. I did, however, enjoy my time with George & his reminiscents & I'm glad he got out of the briar patch when he did.
(09/26/99)

Rebecca