Here are some excerpts from this new book:
* Although Dutch would develop a winning sense of humor — he would be one of the best joke – tellers ever to become president — he was, and would always remain, a stranger to irony or sarcasm. Hurtful humor was as alien to his nature as disillusionment and self – awareness. As his first wife, Jane Wyman, said, “He has fun without hurting feelings.” 12 That was just as well from the standpoint of his future political career. Politicians, such as John McCain, Bob Dole, and Mo Udall, whose wit is too cutting — and who are too apt to puncture their own or others’ pieties and pretensions — seldom get elected to the nation’s highest office. Few people would buy a political platform — or any other product — from a salesman who is less than entirely, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, and unironically convinced of its superior virtues. And Dutch always was, whether he was promoting school spirit in his teenage years or tax cuts in his senior years. His beliefs changed over the years, but his devotion to them remained steadfast. He was, from the start, a true believer — and not just in Christianity.
