Over at the Racing Form, we’ve been keeping track of how ’08 hopefuls are doing in the bookselling department. Though Barack Obama is in the top ten currently with both a paperback and hardcover, this cycle’s race has an unprecedented number of best-selling authors — and would even if only Hillary were running (she’s written six). But candidates almost always write a book of one sort or another — usually a very particular sort. Mike Huckabee’s oddly titled tome on civic virtue (it’s a play on his slightly more appealing diet book) is the surest sign he’s running, and McCain’s bestselling 1999 autobiography was one of the things that put him on the national map. (That and the Kool-Aid they drank on the Straight Talk Express.)
All of which is to say, maybe Chuck Hagel is gonna run after all. One source tells me that the newly pacifist, plucky Great Plains senator is actively shopping a proposal to publishers; Hagel’s spokesman would only confirm that his boss is “considering writing a book.” Around the office, we have a few suggestions for titles. My favorite: “The Sane McCain.”
