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A review by bagusayp
UnPresidented: Politics, Pandemics and the Race that Trumped all Others by Jon Sopel
4.0
Jon Sopel has been the BBC’s North America Editor since 2014. In this partly memoir-partly reportage book, he recounts the day to day journey of reporting the 2020 United States presidential election. The story begins in mid-2019 when it was still uncertain who will be chosen as the nominee for Democratic Party up until the moment Joe Biden was announced as the president-elect on the 7th of November. You will need to appreciate the details and some witty comments that Jon Sopel injected in this book with regards to Biden’s and Trump’s personalities. But in the end, Mr Sopel says ‘election defeat to Trump was what kryptonite was to Superman.’
There is a reason why the 2020 election gives a different flavour and tension compared to the previous ones. We have the Covid-19 pandemic, which was declared a national emergency in the US in March 2020. Mr Sopel is not shy to provide us with personal remarks about how the pandemic is affecting his globalised family, leaving him estranged from his wife and daughter who live in the UK and his son and daughter-in-law in Australia, whereas he was expected to return to the US to cover the election for the BBC. But it is through this mixture of personal experience that he could build sympathy with ordinary people affected by the pandemic, in contrast with the handling of the pandemic by the Trump administration that brought many casualties with death tolls comparable to the whole US military casualties in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined.
Mr Sopel’s analysis is top-notch. And no, this is not a heavy-to-digest political textbook. The language used by Mr Sopel corresponds to what a diary should look like, but still providing in-depth analysis about Trump’s blunders that led to his eventual demise, why Biden won despite the fact that he was labelled ‘sleepy Joe’ not by few, and the turn of tides of the election that bring more favourable outcomes to the Dems in November.
I noticed that there are two important factors that led to Trump’s defeat as Mr Sopel points out in this book. The first is the coronavirus which the White House mishandled, with Trump’s recommendation often in conflict with what his chief health advisor recommended, such as the recommendation to wear a face mask which he vetoed and his decision to hold election rallies with little respect to social distancing protocols. Second, as an incumbent, Trump could no longer blame other politicians or authorities for the fiascos that have happened during the three-and-a-half years of his administration. The logic of Trump’s campaign could no longer hold up his position with a narrative as louse as ‘choose Trump to save America from Trump’s America’.
Overall, UnPresidented is a thought-provoking book, although I don’t know how the tension during the 2020 election will be remembered in the next few decades in history, about two old guys over their seventies fought for the presidency of the US during the time when coronavirus has been claiming a large number of lives with the elderly as its main target. But I’d have to agree that ‘2020 hasn’t been a normal election. 2020 hasn’t been a normal year’.
There is a reason why the 2020 election gives a different flavour and tension compared to the previous ones. We have the Covid-19 pandemic, which was declared a national emergency in the US in March 2020. Mr Sopel is not shy to provide us with personal remarks about how the pandemic is affecting his globalised family, leaving him estranged from his wife and daughter who live in the UK and his son and daughter-in-law in Australia, whereas he was expected to return to the US to cover the election for the BBC. But it is through this mixture of personal experience that he could build sympathy with ordinary people affected by the pandemic, in contrast with the handling of the pandemic by the Trump administration that brought many casualties with death tolls comparable to the whole US military casualties in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined.
Mr Sopel’s analysis is top-notch. And no, this is not a heavy-to-digest political textbook. The language used by Mr Sopel corresponds to what a diary should look like, but still providing in-depth analysis about Trump’s blunders that led to his eventual demise, why Biden won despite the fact that he was labelled ‘sleepy Joe’ not by few, and the turn of tides of the election that bring more favourable outcomes to the Dems in November.
I noticed that there are two important factors that led to Trump’s defeat as Mr Sopel points out in this book. The first is the coronavirus which the White House mishandled, with Trump’s recommendation often in conflict with what his chief health advisor recommended, such as the recommendation to wear a face mask which he vetoed and his decision to hold election rallies with little respect to social distancing protocols. Second, as an incumbent, Trump could no longer blame other politicians or authorities for the fiascos that have happened during the three-and-a-half years of his administration. The logic of Trump’s campaign could no longer hold up his position with a narrative as louse as ‘choose Trump to save America from Trump’s America’.
Overall, UnPresidented is a thought-provoking book, although I don’t know how the tension during the 2020 election will be remembered in the next few decades in history, about two old guys over their seventies fought for the presidency of the US during the time when coronavirus has been claiming a large number of lives with the elderly as its main target. But I’d have to agree that ‘2020 hasn’t been a normal election. 2020 hasn’t been a normal year’.