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Title details for Politics Lost by Joe Klein - Available

Politics Lost

How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid

by Joe Klein
Terence McGovern
Audiobook
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People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn’t holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters’ trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue. The question is: Why? The more urgent question is: What can be done about it?
Few people are more qualified to deal with both questions than Joe Klein.
There are many loud and opinionated voices on the political scene, but no one sees or writes with the clarity that this respected observer brings to the table. He has spent a lifetime enmeshed in politics, studying its nuances, its quirks, and its decline. He is as angry and fed up as the rest of us, so he has decided to do something about it—in these pages, he vents, reconstructs, deconstructs, and reveals how and why our leaders are less interested in leading than they are in the “permanent campaign” that political life has become.
The book opens with a stirring anecdote from the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Klein re-creates the scene of Robert Kennedy’s appearance in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, where he gave a gut-wrenching, poetic speech that showed respect for the audience, imparted dignity to all who listened, and quelled a potential riot. Appearing against the wishes of his security team, it was one of the last truly courageous and spontaneous acts by an American politician—and it is no accident that Klein connects courage to spontaneity. From there, Klein begins his analysis—campaign by campaign—of how things went wrong. From the McGovern campaign polling techniques to Roger Ailes’s combative strategy for Nixon; from Reagan’s reinvention of the Republican Party to Lee Atwater’s equally brilliant reinvention of behind-the-scenes strategizing; from Jimmy Carter to George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W.—as well as inside looks at the losing sides—we see how the Democrats become diffuse and frightened, how the system becomes unbalanced, and how politics becomes less and less about ideology and more and more about how to gain and keep power. By the end of one of the most dismal political runs in history—Kerry’s 2004 campaign for president—we understand how such traits as courage, spontaneity, and leadership have disappeared from our political landscape.
In a fascinating final chapter, the author refuses to give easy answers since the push for easy answers has long been part of the problem. But he does give thoughtful solutions that just may get us out of this mess—especially if any of the 2008 candidates happen to be paying attention.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 18, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780739353684
      • File size: 288845 KB
      • Duration: 10:01:45

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Klein's premise--that American politics have been corrupted and dumbed-down by consultant- and pollster-driven campaigns--is laid out in accessible conversational detail. Terence McGovern's delivery is straightforward, perhaps to the point of being deadpan, but the listener won't miss a word or salient point. If the topic does not grab your attention, the narrator won't. But if you want a detailed litany of how elections have become more about media dissection of process and less about real issues of importance to voters, then you'll listen intently. Klein includes many interesting details of presidential campaigns since Truman '48, but the price is a somewhat loose train of thought. T.F. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Klein is no actor--his voice is rather strained and thin--but he reads this fascinating history of recent presidential campaigns and their takeover by consultants, pollsters, and marketers with excellent intonation, modulation, and emotional emphasis, and with great energy. It's his material, and he tells it as much as reads it; it flies by. While Klein has a serious reformer's purpose (though he exhorts more than counsels), at times he sounds like a mere petulant critic irritated at not having a better quality of show to review. Music swelling up at the program's end is severely corny. But this remains a compelling, evenhanded, informative book, one every voter should know. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 6, 2006
      The people castigated in this lively but self-contradictory jeremiad make up the "pollster-consultant industrial complex" of political handlers responsible for today's bland, prefabricated candidates, carefully stage-managed campaigns and vacuous, focus-grouped policy proposals. Political reporter and Time
      pundit Klein (Primary Colors
      ) traces the political consultants' influence through pungent insider accounts of presidential campaigns from 1968 to the present, throwing in plenty of his own armchair quarterbacking of triumphs and fiascoes. Throughout, he deplores the deadening of American political culture and celebrates the few politicians, like Ronald Reagan and John McCain, who occasionally slip the consultant's leash, blurt out an unfashionable opinion, take a principled stand or otherwise demonstrate their unvarnished humanity. Unfortunately, Klein's politics of personal authenticity—he longs for a candidate "who gets angry, within reason; gets weepy, within reason... but only if these emotions are rare and real"—seems indistinguishable from the image-driven, style-over-substance politics he decries; he just wishes the imagery and style were more colorful and compelling. Moreover, Klein's insistence that the electorate cares much more about the sincerity or "phoniness" of a politician's character than about policy issues puts him squarely in the camp of people who think voters are stupid.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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