Fat Man in a Middle Seat: Forty Years of Covering Politics

It's impossible not to like Jack W. Germond, the veteran journalist who became a household name for political junkies during his 15 years on The McLaughlin Group. He's a reporter's reporter, the kind of fellow who knows that for every good story "you spend two or three rainy Friday nights at the airport in Atlanta trying to fly standby and ending up as the fat man in the middle seat." Germond cut his teeth at a small newspaper in Michigan, where he began to master his trade: "Once you learned to deal with Carlos Gastambide, the business agent for the largest UAW local at the Monroe Auto Equipment Company, you would not likely be intimidated again by any source at any level, up to and including the White House." He later rubbed elbows with some of the best-known journalists of his generation, and his memoir contains plenty of anecdotes about these colleagues (David Broder, Tom Brokaw, Robert Novak) as well as the people they covered. His chapter on The McLaughlin Group, which he abruptly quit in 1996, is a real highlight, revealing both his disdain for television's "lowest common denominator" programming and the medium's awesome financial temptations. Like most reporters, Germond is a conventional liberal by temperament--yet readers of all political stripes will enjoy his fast-paced recollections. --John J. Miller