So even though I’m pretty certain in which primary and for whom I’ll be voting on Feb. 5th, I still decided to read Mark Halperin’s The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from, and How You Can Choose.

Despite criticism from Media Matters for America Smackdown correspondent Elbert Ventura regarding Halperin’s Drudge-like obsession with leading the Gang of 500 by its nose while overseeing ABC’s surprisingly influential tipsheet The Note until earlier this year (leaving The Note a shadow of its former self) when he moved to Time, I basically had my political coming of age on a steady diet of Halperin through 2003-2004 during the previous presidential election cycle. With rare incisiveness combined with even rarer wit, he (and his merry gang) frequently had me laughing out loud, occasionally with the mere titles of each day’s Note. I remember

With this book, none of Halperin’s wit is to be found. But his addiction to politics (stronger by orders of magnitude than my own, I imagine) is on full display as he lovingly creates mini-hagiographies of each candidate. He creates thumbnail portraits of each candidate replete with detail but never damning or warning. That said, it is definitely a must-read for anyone choosing a candidate. Much more is made of each person in favor of the parties each will hope to represent, and I think that’s a strength in a voter’s guide. I try never to approach a race with a single letter (D or R or even I) looming large in my mind before I vote, preferring to know exactly what I’m getting (through careful analysis of a candidate) rather than a rough idea (through review of a platform nearest the level of office for which I’ll be voting). If I voted in Texas, where the Republicans have proclaimed America a Christian nation in their platform, I might think differently. But Halperin’s book serves as a reminder just how important analysis is when voting, and he does a thorough job reviewing the personal, political, and policy backgrounds of each candidate in a volume slim enough that one could easily read it straight through before Feb. 5th (or even Jan. 3rd if one is looking to fundraise before the Iowa caucus).

It’s difficult to discern Halperin’s internal biases, although he paints stereotypical visions of Clinton as triangulator and Obama as inexperienced. There’s definitely a chance I, as a reader, am more sensitive to critical portrayals of the candidates I like. I didn’t find his description of Hillary flattering, but maybe creating one would itself be unfair. I think the most surprising entry might be Edwards’s in terms of Halperin’s giving him the benefit of the doubt in terms of his loss of control of his public image (which Halperin certainly helped in the Note era). The book was published just slightly too late to avoid wasting space on Brownback, and, for some reason, Halperin included Fred Thompson as a top-tier candidate rather than including him among “More Republicans,” to which Mike Huckabee is relegated.

The thing I understood least by the end was the subtitle’s implication: “how you can choose.” There was no closing remark, no afterword. The book offered no summary guidance. It’s much more genuinely an “I report, you decide” volume, as it should be. For those still playing spin the bottle, I heartily recommend this book

I started reading The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 around the same time. It’s a much denser volume, and older, written when Halperin was still heavily betting on a Clinton-McCain showdown.

This post was written by Freddie