The Unraveling: Reflections on Politics without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis

By Bob Bauer

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

As the American presidential election in November approaches, the reading public can expect a deluge of works that ignite passions and provide endless fodder for the cable news punditry. Amidst this din, Bob Bauer has written The Unraveling, a calm and measured political memoir. Bauer, an attorney, is a fixture of Democratic politics. He has represented countless campaigns, served as counsel to Senate Democrats during the Clinton impeachment trial and White House counsel to Barack Obama. As the Biden campaign’s chief lawyer in 2020, he directly confronted the major legal fights in that election’s aftermath and represented President Biden in the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents. It is worth noting from the jump that The Unraveling is not meant to shock, air dirty laundry or settle scores. Instead, it serves as Bauer’s attempt to take stock of how politics has fractured over his nearly five-decade career and to argue for ethics as the pillar of its restoration.

Bauer asserts that the argument is worth making now more than ever. Our political nadir, he notes, has fostered “a cynicism defined at its core by rejection, the repudiation of politics as a democratic value,” whereby “election denialism feeds a form of antipolitics that rejects the tenets of free exercise of democratic politics.” Although Donald Trump is by far the most flagrant actor in fueling this outlook, he is not the sole culprit. Bauer deals with many shameful and unethical episodes long preceding Trump, including George H.W. Bush’s infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad devised by Lee Atwater, the Ken Starr investigation and the Al Gore campaign’s perfidy regarding Bill Bradley’s voting record during the 2000 Democratic presidential primary.

Bauer writes with candor about his own role in bitter and sometimes portentous conflicts, from a racketeering lawsuit against Tom DeLay to helping Democrats overturn a Republican congressional victory in 1984. At times he expresses regret and one gets the overall sense that he feels a bit queasy about many of these episodes. He also writes well about the perpetual tension between legal boundaries and political aims: “If winning is everything, the lawyer, like the other senior staff, has to ‘get it.’...‘Yes’ is the legal advice most coveted in the campaign. And a no is often met with disbelief.”

Bauer also weaves in family history. We learn that his father, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, was a victim of the weaponization of institutions for partisan ends, testifying before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s subcommittee on investigations in response to questions of his loyalty and purported lack of anti-communist zeal. This story is one of the book’s most compelling moments and the ultimate rejection of McCarthyism by Senate Republicans serves as a prime example of ethical political leadership. 

Bauer of course devotes plenty of space to issues of the day and his participation in addressing them. Some of these reflections strengthen his argument (flagrant conflicts at the Supreme Court, the weaponization of the impeachment process). His stance on money in politics, however, raises serious doubts about relying on politicians' ethical judgment. Bauer is less concerned by “how much money is spent, or by the sources of the cash or interests behind it, as by the various ways it is spent. Politicians, parties, and other political organizations pour cash into ever more innovative, technologically sophisticated techniques for winning over and turning out voters and depressing the turnout among the opposition.” But doesn’t this entire system of harvesting and targeting voters rely on immense sums of money? Would restricting fundraising and spending by campaigns, parties and PACs not limit the scale and power of these tools? 

The book’s argument and enjoyment is also undermined by stilted prose and cliches. In his chapter titled “Politics and the Warrior Mentality” we learn that the commitment to winning campaigns is defined by “a taste for combat and the guts to do what is necessary to win,” followed by the assessment that “campaigns are a violent affair. The candidates, the lawyers, the staff, the consultants are all in a war.” In Washington, equating politics to combat is as predictable as sweat-soaked bureaucrats in the stifling summer heat. 

The reader might also hope for a prominent Beltway insider to share some behind-the-scenes moments that both underscore our ethical deficit and the need for change. Sadly, we get no color or revealing portraits of current major figures. For instance, Bauer discusses his role playing Donald Trump during Biden’s 2020 debate prep without revealing any details about his boss. Or consider this recollection during Biden’s transition to the White House amidst the heated legal battles fueled by Trump’s refusal to accept the election’s results:

After the election of Joe Biden and in the middle of legal struggles over Trump’s denialism and the obstacles thrown up to a smooth transition, the president-elect presided over a call on a legal issue. I pressed for consideration of an option. The president-elect balked. He appreciated the theoretical strength of my position but doubted its timing or persuasiveness with the press or public. We did not go in the direction I favored and, looking back, I can see that he read the situation more correctly than I did. I was right on the law, but that was not good enough.

No Woodwardian recaps of in-the-room decision making here. 

As the book’s subtitle, Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis, implies, Bauer wants us to fully grasp the stakes of this perilous political moment. Unfortunately, his efforts are diluted due to a lack of vivid storytelling and apparent reluctance to share details of recent high-stakes debates and decisions, especially in the wake of the 2020 election. Given that Bauer is still an advisor to Biden, his reticence hardly comes as a surprise. Nonetheless, these flaws leave the reader wondering if his argument would be more persuasive as an essay rather than a boilerplate contribution to the pre-election book frenzy.

Izzy Rosen is a book reviewer living in Washington, D.C