Imus Will Not Promise to Read 'The Promise,' But Thinks You Should

Imus and his guest Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise, took a break from talking about their respective cancers to address a recent column Alter posted on The Daily Beast website, where he quoted former White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, who in 2008 said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
 
“Which was just Rahm Emanuel being honest about the way things work in politics,” Alter, also a columnist for Newsweek, clarified today. “When 9/11 happened, the Bush administration used the opportunity to do al kinds of things they had wanted to do.”
 
Alter was criticized on Hannity last night for raising Emanuel’s point in the aftermath of Saturday’s episode in Tucson, Arizona, but he defended his line of thinking by saying that once the Obama administration gets past the immediate reaction to the tragedy, they should use it as an opportunity to move forward, and to create something positive.
 
“The finger-pointing and everything started so quickly,” Alter said of the knee-jerk response by people on both sides of the political debate to blame one another. And while he by no means wants anybody censured, and has no intentions to ramp down his own use of certain metaphors, he thinks changes can be made without killing self-expression.
 
Picking up on a point Sen. Bob Kerrey made yesterday, Imus observed that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head on Saturday but survived, seems like “a good egg,” something Alter often heard around the Capitol in the course of his reporting.
 
Since this appearance was meant to promote the paperback release of The Promise, which examines Obama’s first year in office, Alter touched on the President’s capacity to react to challenging situations. 
 
Back in the fall of 2008, when the economy was tanking, Obama “seemed like a calm, rational, sensible person amid all the noise,” Alter said, adding that now might be a good time for Obama to lose the teleprompter, and to speak from the heart at the various memorial services he will attend in Tucson over the next few days.
 
Alter copped to being “slightly left of center,” but promised that The Promise is right down the middle. “People who despise Obama won’t like the book, and people who love him without reservation probably won’t like it,” he said.
 
Though historians in the future will someday closely study this time in American history, Alter chose to write The Promise so soon after the 2008 election, because, he said, “I got people when their memories were fresh.”
 
But Imus’s favorite part of the book he has not read is the dedication, which reads, “For Emily, with all my love,” and is meant for Alter’s wife, about whom Imus feels similarly.
 
“She loves you, too,” Alter said, unenthusiastically. “Although, I hope not in the same way.”
 
-Julie Kanfer