Air time: Andrea Mitchell sat front row for 30 years of American political history--and came away with nothing to say.

• Author: Zengerle, Jason
• Position: On Political Books - Talking Back ... to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels - Book Review

Talking Back ... to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels By Andrea Mitchell Viking, $25.95

If I worked as a book editor and had the chance to publish the memoirs of NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Fin sure I'd jump at the opportunity. The possibilities for good material, after all, seem overwhelming. Mitchell is a prominent television news reporter, having covered the White House, Congress, and now foreign affairs for the highest-rated network news broadcast. She's been everywhere--from Kabul to Pyongyang--and interviewed everyone. Her interviews are famously feisty. Just this summer, Sudanese security forces muscled Mitchell out of a room when she interrupted a Khartomn photo opportunity for Condoleezza Rice and the Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir by asking Bashir about his government's support for genocide. Mitchell's feistiness might stem from the fact that she's a bit of a gender pioneer, having broken into hard news when most women on television were still being relegated to delivering weather reports. And, just to make things even more interesting, Mitchell's also Washington royalty, by dint of her marriage to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Taking Back, in other words, seems to have all the makings of a very good book. Throw in the fact that books by television nexus personalities--from network anchors like Brokaw and Rather to cable shouters like O'Reilly and Hannity--often become bestsellers, and Viking's decision to publish Mitchell's memoir was a no-brainer. Alas, what was a great book in theory did not turn out to be one in reality.

Much of Taking Back is a retelling of the last 30 years of American political history as seen through Mitchell's eves. This wouldn't be a bad thing, if Mitchell--who has had a front-row seat to that history ever since 1978 when she was hired by NBC after working in local news in Philadelphia and Washington--had some interesting insights. But she doesn't. Her political analysis is so conventional it's practically banal. Ronald Reagan, she writes, "was an actor who had become a politician; by combining his skills, he became a better politician than he'd been an actor." Bill Clinton "reminded me of a very bright, but undisciplined, college student who left his studying until the last minute, and somehow aced his courses." And George W. Bush "views the world in sharp contrasting colors rather than shades of gray."

Mitchell's behind-the-scenes details of how she has covered...