What a party, indeed.
Last week's celebration for the new book of that title from former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe felt more like a political rally than a publishing event. Held at the Four Seasons and packed with such nonliterary luminaries as Bill O'Reilly and Al Sharpton, the evening was, ostensibly, the kickoff of the St. Martin's publicity campaign for a new author. But really, it was the kickoff of a different kind of campaign: Hillary Clinton's for president. Just two days earlier Hillary had declared herself "in it to win it" and named as her campaign chairman none other than the guy we were honoring that night.
The timing could hardly have been a coincidence, even if the pub date for the book—and McAuliffe's appearances on the Today and the Daily shows—had been scheduled months before Clinton's announcement. McAuliffe himself joked about it in his speech, when he thanked Hillary for moving up the date of her candidacy announcement to help him sell his book. Make no mistake: the delightful, rowdy, sometimes silly boys-will-be-boys memoir that is What a Party! was always intended to be a selling tool: it's just that, unlike most memoirs, it's less about selling the author than it is about selling his friends.
McAuliffe knew this from the start, of course; when I interviewed him about the book a few months ago he declared—in his boisterous drawl that would sound almost Clintonian were it not for the strains of his upstate New York origins—that his intention was to praise his friends, not to bury them. And while the book contains plenty of Clinton anecdotes, they're genial, they're-just-folks-like-us tales of Hillary playing mermaid in the swimming pool with McAuliffe's children and Bill's competitive golf game. The point, he told me then and has told many others since, was to make people love the Clintons as he does.
Whether the plan will work remains, of course, to be seen. But so far McAuliffe has some powerful help. Barnes & Noble took a strong position on the book, which has a 150,000-copy first printing, and in N.Y.C. the chain moved his reading from one of the "lesser" stores to the bigger Union Square location. Is the energy expended really for McAuliffe, or for Hillary Clinton? B&N chairman Len Riggio is a major Democratic supporter, so you have to wonder. Or, actually, maybe you don't.
Still, what does it matter? We're in the business of selling books, and if McAuliffe's book helps Hillary's campaign and Hillary's campaign helps sell books, neither McAuliffe nor St. Martin's is likely to mind.
At most book parties, for example, the author is the featured speaker, the one you wait to hear. At the Four Seasons, that honor belonged to Bill Clinton, who toasted his friend and mouthed "I love you," as he stepped off the stage to embrace him. (Chelsea Clinton was there, too, but not Hillary, who was likely in Washington, arranging her somber face for her photo op at the Bush State of the Union the next day.) "What must it be like for him to be upstaged like that?" a partygoer was heard to wonder.
Are you kidding? I thought. Deferring to the Clintons is, literally, the story of Terry McAuliffe's life.
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