'08 Reading Tip: Every Other Page

It's not just the rubber chicken platters at fundraisers and the negative ads that make running for president so tough. Declared Democrat Tom Vilsack, the ex-Iowa guv, says it's also hard to keep up with the needed reading, especially of the books supporters shove into his arms at political events. So to handle that he's testing out speed-reading techniques.

Vilsack tells us that he's "collecting strategies for how you read these books." Like? "Well, there is the strategy that is articulated by one person that you read the first chapter and the last chapter. The strategy that some have articulated is you read the first sentence of each paragraph, every other page." Whichever one he settles on: "I will try to read as much as I possibly can of scholarly works that give me a sense of what people are thinking."

By Paul Bedard