Why Are Most Political Books/Memoirs So Quickly Forgotten?

[Indy Texas]

I'm not the only one that notices this, right? Nobody talks about books by or about politics/politicians a year or two after they come out, not even autobiographies. Nobody holds up An American Life, My Life, Decision Points, or Square Peg (same thing for Senators) as great works of literature or even talks about them anymore, and nobody will talk about Shattered, What Happened, Let Trump be Trump, or anything like that in a year or two. It seems only occasionally that books written about a subject long after they die are persistently respected, such as American Lion, and that's only because they're historical figures by that point.

Why is this? Why don't even presidential autobiographies stay relevant? I can understand quickly churned out stuff written at the moment falling out of relevance, but one would think that the personal memoirs and autobiographies of a President wouldn't so quickly be forgotten. Is politics and its people that are still alive just not gripping material?

The primary reason is that they are not intended to be long-lasting in the first place.

The primary purpose of 99% of contemporary political "books" (to the extent that they can be called such a thing) is to enable the "author" to go on a book tour. And now we get to the real purpose of writing a political "book" - enabling the "author" to be invited to television interviews and radio interviews so that they can "talk about their book," and thereby get free publicity and also get some money. The best part of this is that the author can throw in a few finger wagging bits and then also cast themselves as a "public intellectual" and a very serious person.

By contrast, in the olden days of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs and the like, authors wrote for a different purpose - for history, because mass media television/radio book interviews did not exist.

^^^

Most books politicians write are quickly forgotten precisely because they're so forgettable.

(1) The politicians don't write them. They are ghostwritten, hence the "with so-and-so" byline below the "author's" name. Writing a book is a full-time job in and of itself, which is why you have people like Ben Sasse magically able to churn out books while serving as a US Senator.

(2) The subject matter is mostly drivel. It's either a retelling of a recent phase of one's worklife (serving in Congress, serving as a Cabinet secretary, etc) or a wordier version of whatever their political platform is.

The original point of a memoir was that it was written near the end of one's life, after retiring for good from public life, to serve as a recollection at a suitable distance and remove from current events so as to be more circumspect and reflective. Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs are considered the best of any American politician for that reason.

I've never bought or read any book by a current elected official/political figure for that reason. Reading it is going to be a waste of time. Any salacious tidbits will be covered by the media anyway. The books serve no purpose other than to be a free giveaway when you go to a paid speech they give, and for politically-connected groups to buy bulk orders of to pump up the sales numbers.

[Indy Texas]

You could make a compelling case that the last US politician who wrote any book that was actually useful was Herbert Hoover.

Principles of Mining was commonly used in college courses.

His translation of On the Nature of Metals is still the standard English language translation of that book.

[Indy Texas]

I think Dreams From My Father, Obama's first book, might be a bit of an exception, in that that book and its popularity was a lot of people's first glimpse of Obama before he was a national icon. Of course, he wrote it long before he was running for President.

Campaign books are universally garbage, and memoirs are useful but inherently problematic because a memoir is designed to make you look good and take a sledgehammer to your critics. Also, most Presidential memoirs aren't written like Grant's, which is incredibly honest, reflective, and a fine piece of literature (maybe the first and last Presidential memoir to be worth reading).

Pretty much the only things Presidential memoirs are cited for are for quotes for the actual, real, professional biographies of Presidents. (Or, in the case of Jefferson Davis' memoir, as a favorite text for Southern apologists)

Dreams From My Father was a seriously authored autobiography. The Audacity of Hope was glossy campaign drivel.

[Indy Texas]

In British politics, some of the best memoirs come from backbench MPs with nothing else to lose. For example, the diaries that are most popular to describe the New Labour years are not from Blair, Brown, Mandelson or Campbell, but Chris Mullin, a Sunderland MP who explicitly states that he thinks he failed to apply himself and dedicates a lot of his writing to quite bizarre legislative pursuits like his obsession with Freemasonry. Helps of course that Mullin started out a writer, penning the classic "A Very British Coup", and it definitely helped that he regarded his political career as completely dead, so he could happily be frank and honest about people, the public and himself.

This is also why Cabinet secretaries who leave on bad terms can be the exception to the rule and write fairly blunt, circumspect books.

The Price of Loyalty by Paul O'Neill is a good example.