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

by Joe Klein Narrated by Terence McGovern

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

According to veteran journalist/author Joe Klein, American democracy is being buried by political consultants, pollsters, focus groups, and 24-hour cable news barrages. In Politics Lost, he dissects our dire current impasse, drawing on his 35 years of reporting for Time, The New Yorker, and other publications. Klein describes the contempt that political professionals feel for the populace and explains what voters can do to correct this demeaning situation.

Jennifer Senior

Happily, as the book gathers steam, Klein gains control of his material. His analysis of political mavericks — how they tend to be "angry loners, cold fish" — is one of the shrewdest and most honest I've read, right down to his confessions about how his own manner changes around them (when McCain implied in a formal interview that he hadn't been a faithful husband during his first marriage, Klein says he was so taken aback he stopped taking notes and tried to console him). His autopsy of Howard Dean's campaign is mercilessly precise. So is his autopsy of Kerry's; once and for all, he flattens Bob Shrum, the liberal courtier who oversaw the whole craven affair, and he flattens Kerry with 13 words: "The man was a hero under fire and a coward when he wasn't."
— The New York Times

Peter Beinhart

Klein rightly flays Gore and Kerry for not being true to themselves. But he is also harshly critical of the old liberal orthodoxies that Democratic political consultants devote so much time to camouflaging.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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. (Apr. 18) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Columnist and TV pundit Klein (Primary Colors) bemoans the paucity of real leaders in contemporary American politics, people with the courage to speak their minds on significant public issues, regardless of opinion poll results. Klein's examples of such politicians include Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 presidential bid and Mario Cuomo in his 1982 gubernatorial campaign. Unfortunately, as he admits, American politics has been hijacked by political consultants, who package candidates for general consumption. These consultants, he contends, have trivialized politics by considering Americans ignorant and malleable. Klein relates his own experiences with consultants from both parties and, in his breezy style, provides loads of insider gems that political junkies will enjoy. However, he stops short of indicting members of the Fourth Estate for their role in allowing the consultants to continue unchallenged through press coverage of stories rather than issues. This is not a great book- Joe McGinniss identified the phenomenon of consultants many years ago in his The Selling of the President 1968-but it will likely receive much attention because of its author, its message, and its juicy tidbits, so public libraries should be prepared to purchase it. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/05, as Turnip Day.] Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

When was the last time you saw a politician show "any wisp of unscripted humanity"? Thought so. For political journalist Klein (The Natural, 2002, etc.), that "loss of spontaneity" has been the ruination of American politics. Our politicians likely got in trouble for varying from the script-think Howard Dean's scream, Ross Perot's "gorilla dust," George H.W. Bush's "Message: I care"-which is why political moments are micromanaged to the tiniest detail. The micromanagers are the consultants who, since the days of the Machiavellian Pat Caddell, have enjoyed excessive power, as Al Gore found, sorrowfully, in 2000. Klein plainly dislikes these pollsters and focus-group formers and image-shapers, but they have their uses, he allows, since "the majority of American presidents have been overmatched mediocrities." Carter? A nothing who played right into the Republicans' hands by daring to chide Americans for profligacy during the energy crisis of the late '70s. Bush I? A nobody; decent enough, though managed by the preeminently indecent Lee Atwater. Clinton? A man who, for all his flaws and essential timidity, at least picked consultants who would endorse his programs rather than authorize them, in the manner of, say, Karl Rove. Reagan? Consulted and consulted, but still likely to do what he wanted-one reason for his success, as it turns out, is that Americans seem to prefer a leader who speaks to them in intelligible language rather than mouthing empty platitudes about patriotism and family values. Which explains Bush II, also micromanaged to the nth degree, "focus-grouped to a trice," and "creatively wrong on a series of issues," yet a font of sympathetic common-man shortcomings compared to theever-so-careful, aloof John Kerry, a victim of "pervasive weakness" who, by Klein's account, never got around to speaking his mind about much of anything. Nicely acerbic. A cousin of Daniel Boorstin's incomparable The Image (1961), lacking its intellectual heft, but still a pleasure for politics junkies.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169208634
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/18/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

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