The Truth of the Matter: My Life in and Out of Politics

The Democratic power broker instrumental in the careers of Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson presents his memoirs, covering his political rise, fall, and rise again and offering valuable lessons in the political game

Lance, the political strategist who guided Jimmy Carter's successful 1976 presidential campaign, was forced to resign as budget director a year later due to accusations of irregular banking practices when he headed the National Bank of Georgia. In this informal memoir written with former Wash ing ton Post reporter Gilbert, Lance offers his version of his ordeal as the most investigated citizen in the history of the United States (the Justice Department's file on the case contains more than 400,000 pages), describing his appearances before congressional committees and his eventual exoneration by a jury in 1980. He claims that the campaign to drive him out of Washington was sparked by fears that he might be appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Lance also defends longtime friend Carter against charges that his presidential performance was characterized by weakness and indecision. His matter-of-fact attitude about his difficulties is admirable, even inspiring, but his long absence from the public eye makes it unlikely that the book will have wide appeal.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

If presidential candidate Al Smith was the Democratic Party's happy warrior, Bert Lance, on the evidence of the grouchy memoir at hand, ranks among the more alienated of its behind-the-scenes power brokers. The subtitle notwithstanding, the author offers precious few insights on his private life. Indeed, he focuses largely on his career as a fund-raising political strategist for Jimmy Carter and, more recently, Jesse Jackson. Whether his once-close relationship with the ex-President can survive the damned-with-faint-praise portrait that's a centerpiece of the querulous text will strike many as a very open question. The former banker from Calhoun, Georgia, also furnishes an exculpatory account of the legal woes that drove him from office as Carter's budget director. While Lance does not provide much detail on the criminal charges (of which a jury eventually found him not guilty), he complains often and bitterly about how the press has kept the scandal (putatively attributable to GOP fears that the chief executive might appoint him chairman of the FRB) in the public eye for over a decade. On the plus side, Lance comments astutely on contemporary pols and politics, speculating, for instance, that a President's capacity to achieve administration goals may be directly linked to the undesirability of his running mate as a successor. By the author's cynical reasoning, then, George Bush's choice of Dan Quayle was a masterstroke and Carter's anointment of Walter Mondale was a disaster. In like vein, he rails against his party's attempts to accommodate a surfeit of single-issue constituencies. If the Democrats are to regain the White House, he concludes, the party's leaders must create a platform with national appeal instead of one that looks like ``a quilting party for special interests.'' Occasional perspectives apart, the author's featured dish is sour grapes. (Eight pages of photos--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Lance's memoirs are similar in tone and focus to those of the late John Tower ( Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir , LJ 2/1/91). Like Tower, Lance believes that he was unfairly hounded out of Washington. He places much of the blame for this on what he calls the "Washington establishment," which includes elements of the news media and the federal bureaucracy. The author, former head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Carter, does not describe the charges against him with sufficient specificity to allow the general reader to determine if Lance or his critics have the best case. Readers unfamiliar with Lance's troubles will have difficulty discerning just what charges Lance is attempting to rebut. Still, recent news stories about Carter administration figures and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) affair may stimulate interest in Lance's defense of his career in politics.
- Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.