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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

A sign of the times

Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 08:00:03 AM PDT

Enter any bookstore today and you will likely see a sign for Mitt Romney's bookNo Apology, The Case for American Greatness. America is great if you're Mitt Romney and he's not about to apologize for how great things are for him. I don't understand why he got to write a book about it.

Go to Google and enter the words "political book deal." You will learn that the inconsequential dropout former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, recently signed another multi-million dollar book deal. You will see that Scott Brown had a been a Senator for about 30 days before getting his own book deal. Mitt Romney has a book deal. Gov. Bobby Jindal has a book deal. President Obama's half-brother George has a book deal. Yes, even Rod Blagojevich has a book deal. On and on and on. Name any politician, no matter how great or awful as a public servant. Chances are, they've got a million-dollar book deal.

I find it interesting that very few politicians actually write the book before they get the deal. I'm not a writer, but I assume that most book writers create their manuscripts in some lonely cottage in New England. Or maybe they are doing research and putting in hours within the tombs of some major library. But if you happen to be a politician, you don't have to have a particularly literary bent. Hell, you don't even have to write the book! They have people for that. You just show up to take the cover art photograph, go home with a check, and wait for the tour schedule. Must be nice to be able to get rich selling something you