All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid
By Matt Bai. Alfred A. Knopf, 263 pp, hardcover

Human experience is full of watershed events—some huge and far-reaching, like wars, political movements, and technological advances.

Others slip under the radar, subtly altering the zeitgeist surreptitiously and irrevocably.

So it was with the case of Gary Hart, who had the misfortune to begin a run for the American presidency in 1987. It was to prove a volatile time, coming at the precise confluence of post-Watergate investigative journalism, the rise of supermarket tabloids, and the birth of cable news.

While Hart’s alleged marital infidelities were big news at the time, the coverage they received in turn took on a life of its own, ushering in a new era of political discourse. It was, as Matt Bai writes in All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, a story that changed all the journalistic rules, and “blew away decades or precedence in a matter of hours”.

Before Hart, of course, political coverage had been a lot less prurient. Reporters operated under a self-imposed “don’t ask, don’t tell” embargo, and turned a blind eye to all but the most egregious high jinks. It had been an era when—as late as 1983—Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards could openly joke with a reporter that the only thing that could end his career would be getting caught in bed “with either a dead girl or a live boy”.

But a shift in journalistic attitudes had been brewing, Bai tells us, since Watergate. Using a forensic focus, he manages to weave together a number of disparate threads and delivers compelling evidence that the Hart episode was the jumping-off point for our contemporary scandal-driven news. Gary Hart may not have invented the 24-hour news cycle, but he was certainly its first political sacrifice.

The former chief political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, Bai has created a thoughtful and highly entertaining book in the manner of Richard Ben Cramer’s magnum campaign opus What It Takes. It’s an influence he openly and wholeheartedly relishes, and while tying the two books together was a risky move, in Bai’s capable hands it’s a gamble that pays off. With crisp, easygoing prose and a sharp, contemplative mind, it’s evident that Bai is a worthy successor to Cramer’s mantle.

In the end, what really elevates All the Truth Is Out is Bai’s keen ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and formulate ideas, rather than just recite facts. As he makes clear, it’s not the answer to “did he or didn’t he” that’s important, but that the question was asked at all.