"Primary Colors" is an odd book. But maybe the oddest thing about it is how good it is. In spite of its sins it is far and away the best thing I have read about the 1992 campaign; it breaks all the rules and lives to tell about it.

As long as it's in the muck and sticking reasonably close to the facts (and lies) of 1992, Primary Colors is great fun. The descriptions of the campaign trail, from the union-hall meetings to the rubber-chicken dinners, are superb, as is the portrayal of Stanton's relationship with his wife, Susan. It's only when Primary Colors departs from its tasty combo of imaginative journalism and insider politics that it becomes ordinary.

There is a gift of slang and lingo in this novel—"Handi Wipes" for disposable appointees; "muffins" for young and impressionable volunteers; "scorps" for reporters—that in its automatic callousness bespeaks the real thing. As usual, though, the apparently hard-nosed carapace conceals an almost puerile sentimentality...

"Anonymous" takes the view that the "scorps" or scorpions of the Fourth Estate are forever on a blood-in-the-water alert. This opinion, very common in the political class, ministers to its mirror-image among the press corps, which is always ready, with a shy self-deprecating grin, to confess that if it has a fault it is an excess of the "adversarial" gene. Such poppycock, which is in reality no more than an exercise in mutual self-regard, has its usefulness for both parties. The politicians can claim to be held to an impossible standard (which they never are) and the pundits can hold seminars of introspection about whether they have gone too far (which they never do).