SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “Portraits of Six Men Who Would Be President—and One Who Is.” Christian Science Monitor (5 August 1988): 18.

In the following review, Rubin comments that Sheehy provides a more complete portrait of the political candidates she covers in Character: America's Search for Leadership than is available from other sources, concluding that Sheehy expresses a genuine concern for “the quality of America's leadership” and the future of the nation.

Surveys show that voters care more about a candidate's character than his politics. But what, in fact, is character, and how, in this age of image consultants, do we get to see it as it really is?

Character is a reassuringly old-fashioned-sounding word implying ethical judgments. From classical times to the neoclassical 18th century, character studies were portraits of moral fiber—or its lack. But with Rousseau's Confessions (1767), the ethical notion of character was subverted by the emergence of...