![]() When Hockenberry suggested that he seemed to fall for each of the candidates, Cramer was unapologetic.ĬRAMER: I spent six years on this book, so at various times in it, you are viscerally connected to every one of these men. So it was really the internal monologue that I was trying to cover, whereby the person comes to the point where he thinks he ought to be president, then thinks he will be president and finally has to come off of that certainty.įOLKENFLIK: Here, Cramer was speaking in June 1992 to John Hockenberry on NPR. RICHARD BEN CRAMER: Alas, in the nature of the process, five out of six of them are doomed to fail. Cramer, a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Inquirer, would immerse himself in the campaigns of six candidates running for the nation's highest office and figure out the discipline and confidence that enabled them to run. ![]() NPR's David Folkenflik has this remembrance.ĭAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: The conceit of "What It Takes" was deceivingly simple. ![]() Prior to that, Cramer was a Pulitzer-winning foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer.Ĭramer died Monday of complications from lung cancer. His book about the 1988 election, titled "What It Takes," was the defining campaign treatment of the last half century. If anyone knew what it took to cover a presidential campaign, it was Richard Ben Cramer. ![]()
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