A Few of Their Favorite Things
Politicians fight like cats and dogs, but which is White House bound in '08?
May 15, 2007 — -- The Associated Press has been having some fun with the presidential candidates.
Rather than asking them for position papers or lists of endorsements, it's been asking lighthearted, personal questions for a running series on the "personal side of politics."
So far, we've learned about New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's expertise in boxing trivia, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' killer jump shot, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's clogged gutters and Sen. Chris Dodd's, D-Conn., desert-island wish for coffee with cream and sugar.
But when you're running for president, listing your favorite anything is no casual matter. So what do their answers tell us about what kind of people they are -- and what kind of presidents they'd be?
Asked about the last work of fiction he's read, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., went highbrow by choosing "Gilead" -- a Pulitzer Prize winner that just happens to be set in Iowa.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., went old school, naming Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms."
Romney went tough guy, picking Vince Flynn's "Term Limits," a thriller labeled by Library Journal as "a rightist political manifesto."
Three candidates scored easy political points with their choices.
Richardson labeled the Bush administration's energy plan a work of fiction, and Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., had a similar designation for the Democrats' proposal to balance the budget.
To Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., the book version of the Al Gore-inspired Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," also qualified as fiction.
Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Dodd were sure to offend no one -- expect maybe book critics -- by listing John Grisham books.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., apparently missed the point of the question; she chose a work of nonfiction: Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln biography "Team of Rivals."
And then there are the last songs the candidates bought.
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