Ambling Into History: the Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush.

• Author: Lizza, Ryan
• Position: Political booknotes: flirting with W.

AMBLING INTO HISTORY: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush by Frank Bruni HarperCollins, $23.95

LIKE GEORGE W. BUSH, THE SUBject of Ambling into History, author and New York Times reporter Frank Bruni sets the bar low for himself. His campaign memoir, he writes, "is dedicated primarily to what Bush looked and acted like."

No reporter is better equipped to write such an account. Bruni, the most influential Bush correspondent by virtue of his employer, was so assiduously courted by the Republican nominee that his book should have been called The Seduction of Frank Bruni. It is a case study of Bush's vaunted charm offensive. Bush constantly flirted with Bruni. He would playfully grab the reporter by the neck or pinch his cheeks or put his fingers in Bruni's ears. During press conferences he would wink and nod Bruni's way. And when Bruni mentions that he's taking a break from the campaign trail to celebrate his dad's birthday, Bush whips out a card and signs it for him. So perhaps it shouldn't surprise that Bruni becomes smitten, dishing to readers that Bush was far more charming in off-the-record gab sessions than his guarded public persona would suggest. When Bruni suspected the campaign was angry with him, Bush defused tensions by turning to him during a political event and announcing, "I love you, man." He may not have been kidding.

Bruni's account of the 2000 campaign and the first months of the Bush presidency is no Boys on the Bus, Timothy Crouse's raucous send-up of the hard-partying press pack that covered the 1972 election. And it has none of the piercing detail of Richard Ben Cramer's classic tome, What it Takes, about the 1988 race. Most of the material will be familiar to anyone who followed the election. And the behind-the-scenes anecdotes reveal only that the boys on the bus have given way to thirty-something yuppies who obsess about Palm Pilots and tricked-out cell phones, and long for a "luxury hotel that promised a valet service." Instead of smoking pot and hooking up, Bruni and his fellow scribes sneak cigarettes and watch "Sex and the City." They are Ivy League ironists who shop for funny underwear at K-Mart (an NBC producer) and self-mockingly collect moist towelettes for a "wet, citrusy burst of facial refreshment" (Bruni himself). This inane and sometimes tedious account of the Bush press corps' "self-conscious schtick" offers a sociological snapshot of life on today's campaign trail. Bruni's ironic detachment does not...