Jon Stewart’s Next To Last Week On THE DAILY SHOW
True to form, two of the four guests featured by Jon Stewart during his next-to-last week as host of The Daily Show are authors.
Last night, it was historian David McCullough, filling in at the last moment for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who inexplicably backed out of his scheduled appearance. Cruz missed his chance if his goal was to promote his book, A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America (HarperCollins/Broadside Books; 6/30/15). McCullough’s The Wright Brothers,(S&S, 5/5/15), already a best seller, jumped up Amazons’ sales ranking as a result of the appearance.
On Wednesday Stewart will bring back one of his favorite guests, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her latest book is The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, which they discussed when it was published in 2011.
Goodwin’s first appearance on the Daily Show, at the end of 2005, was to discuss her previous title Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Since then, Goodwin has been on the show several times, bringing her perspective on the history of the presidency to discussions of George W. Bush’s final State Of The Union speech (lacking substance, he appears as if “he’s ready to go back to the ranch”), whether Obama would win the 2008 election (“Yes”), then his first hundred days (Goodwin, “he’s doing pretty well”; Stewart was more skeptical) and his first State of the Union address (“he’s failing to articulate a clear legislative vision”)