He’ll flash that famous misty look of his. “He’ll share a laugh or a secret then – a light secret, not a real one – flattering you with the illusion of conspiracy. Henry, chosen, he suspects, because he’s mixed race and the grandson of a renowned civil-rights leader, is initially sceptical. (Any similarities to Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, are entirely uncoincidental John Travolta and Emma Thompson look rather like them in Mike Nichols’s film of the book, from 1998.)
Stanton and his wife, Susan, are a power couple. The book, whose author is still officially anonymous but was revealed soon after its publication, in 1996, to be the American newspaper columnist Joe Klein, is the ultimate manual on how to run a political race, warts and all. “The handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics,” says Henry Burton, campaign manager for Governor Jack Stanton, presidential candidate in waiting, and the maypole around which the novel Primary Colors dances.
