John Dickerson is Moderator of Face the Nation and Political Director of CBS News and a columnist for Slate magazine. In the 2016 Election cycle he has interviewed every major candidate multiple times and was the chief moderator of CBS News' Democratic Debate.
The stakes are high. The characters full of striving and ego. Presidential campaigns are a contest for control of power in the most powerful country on earth. The battle of ideas has a clear end, with winners and losers, and along the way there are sharp turning points-primaries, debates, conventions, and scandals that squeeze candidates into emergency action, frantic grasping, and heroic gambles.
Whistlestop tells the human story of nervous gambits hatched in first-floor hotel rooms, failures of will before the microphone, and the cross-country crack-ups of long-planned stratagems.