John Dickerson, as his fans from Slate's Political Gabfest know, is a natural researcher. His life-long exposure to people who have made American politics, arts, and industry has no doubt prepared him well to the work of putting together a juicy, gratifying historical podcast about presidential ambitions in the US.
He can pull the focus with accuracy from broad, overly shared semi-mischaracterizations (ha: "bromides"!) to the crucial, singular moments where somebody shows that they have understood that the facts are different now, flagging the way with six or seven bang-on quotes from the vast stores of citable material that he accesses for us with ease and joy. It can get deliciously obscure: the Mario Cuomo plane sources?!!
Sometimes the Road to Damascus moment happens directly on the protagonist's path (cf Ross Perot). Sometimes it's more about the bravado and fakery needed to elaborately manufacture such a moment (Reagan-Bush?).
But sometimes John Dickerson tells you about his own moment of revelation, and it might have been triggered by what his neighbor on the bus said, such as when that neighbor wss David Foster Wallace on the Straight Talk Express in New Hampshire, the theme of the latest episode as i write this. [I almost would have had to look that one up, I didn't remember right away which year that was])
Mr. Dickerson is a busy man. From his weekend gig talking with the rich and famous on the TV, to gabbing for almost an hour with his gaggle of smarty, hip LOCs at Slate most Thursdays, to criss-crossing the nation to talk to real people too so as not to be out of touch, to moderating a presidential debate (yes, please, more Dickerson debates!), where does he find the time, right?
One of the answers is that Mr. Dickerson doesn't frown on entertaining, and he will rather have fun and be funny doing it than be formally respectable but popularly indigestible. This liberates him from perfectionism and releases him into the possibilities offered in the less cosseted approach. Together with his facility at recalling facts from his life-long study of politics, this ensures that when there's a tale to be told, he will tell it in a captivating, yet edifying way.
