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The most beguiling parts of All's Fair are those in which the authors try to explain the intricacies of their oddball craft. Here's James: "There's this huge myth, which the media perpetuates, that candidates do what they're told. They don't." And Mary: "The problem with incumbents is they hate bad leaks so much that they start clamping down on all leaks, and you lose a very useful tool."
As a reporter who went through the campaign spin cycle, I found the authors' lengthy musings on the care and feeding of the media (which the Clintonites called "the beast") to be sensible and fair-minded, but also as pedestrian as an overused stump speech. In one prickly passage, James complains that reporters would ask him only about strategy and never about "what Bill Clinton was trying to do for the country." He forgets that he was the campaign strategist -- and not exactly the best source to discuss the nuances of Clinton's health-care plan.
Each in different ways, Mary and James are misfits ill suited for conventional callings. Fortunately for them, campaigns remain one of the last arenas in America where you can earn an officer's stripes on talent rather than paper credentials. All's Fair is a ruggedly honest look at the work and life of political operatives. The authors' byzantine campaign machinations often appear futile and ridiculous, which they freely admit. That is modern politics, a world populated by people like Mary and James, who are neither remarkably noble nor base but simply action junkies with the hubris to believe they can control the chaos of a presidential campaign. If they fall in love along the way, well, that's almost an afterthought.