Readers in Chief

Biden seems oddly lacking in cultural interests of any kind, besides keeping up with the news. He does not appear to love movies or reading. Even his former chief of staff Ron Klain has observed, “Biden is not a recreational reader.”

As for Trump, he makes little bones about his lack of reading. In 2016, he freely admitted that he does not read full books, saying, “Oh, no, it’s so long, because now I read passages. I read — I read areas, I read chapters. I just — I don’t have the time.”

When asked which biographies he was reading to get ready for the presidency, he did not mention any. Of course, Trump’s lack of reading is regularly mocked by comedians. One joked that “the Washington Post published an entire biography of Donald Trump that’s 431 pages long. Trump said it’s a little longer than the books he likes to read by about 431 pages.”

This lack of interest in books represents a significant deviation from much of the preceding half century of American presidents. Trump replaced Barack Obama, who made a big show of going to a bookstore in Martha’s Vineyard annually and letting people know what books he was getting. Obama still posts his annual book recommendations, a designation that could get someone’s book a nice sales bump.