An all-access pass to the inner workings of the Kerry campaign, the grooming of the candidate, and how decisions get made and who will be making them in the run up to the November election.
Two years ago, veteran journalist and biographer Paul Alexander wrote a piece for Rolling Stone magazine that now seems prophetic: He named John Kerry as the candidate who would emerge as the Democratic front-runner in 2004, and identified the reasons, more than a year before Kerry announced his candidacy. Since then, Alexander has been following the campaign-often from a privileged position on the inside. This book will report what he saw, heard, and witnessed about Senator Kerry and his campaign along the way.
The Candidate will reveal what accounted for Kerry's strong, decisive showing in every political contest since the Iowa primaries, and why none of those factors were evident in the pre-Iowa polls. It will explain how the Kerry campaign staged this surprise turnaround, what voters need to know about what goes on behind the scenes in the Kerry war room, and how the campaign is preparing for the run from July to November. Granted unprecedented access to Kerry's family, his campaign team, his advisers, and members of his inner circle, Alexander sheds new light on the man who would be president.
"Writing a book from the campaign trail presents a unique opportunity to tell an important national story with great immediacy," Alexander explains. "The John Kerry story is dramatic, as is the story of how his campaign came together. This is a very different organization than the one I reported on in 2002. How decisions are being made now is a key indicator of how decisions will be made after the Democratic Convention and in the White House, should he defeat President Bush in November."
Paul Alexander is a former reporter for Time magazine and has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, New York, The Village Voice, and the Guardian. Alexander is the author of Man of the People: The Life of John McCain (2002) as well as biographies of Sylvia Plath, J. D. Salinger, and James Dean. Until recently, he was the co-host of "Batchelor & Alexander," a nationally syndicated talk radio show on the ABC Radio Network. Alexander has also directed a documentary on Kerry's Vietnam years, titled Brothers in Arms.
Paul Alexander is the editor of the essay collection Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath and the author of Rough Magic, a biography of Plath; Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, the bestseller that has been published in 10 countries; Death and Disaster: The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race For Andy's Millions; Man of the People: The Life of John McCain; The Candidate, a chronicle of John Kerry's presidential campaign; and Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. His bestseller Murdered was published by Rosetta Books as a Kindle Single.
A former reporter for Time, Alexander has published journalism in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, New York, The Nation, The Village Voice, Salon, Worth, The New York Observer, George, Cosmopolitan, More, Interview, ARTnews, Mirabella, Premiere, Out, The Advocate, Travel & Leisure, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Biography, Men's Journal, Best Life, The New York Review of Books, and Rolling Stone. In Europe, his journalism has appeared in Paris Match, Gente, and The Guardian. He contributes to The Daily Beast.
Shane Salerno's much-anticipated feature documentary Salinger, due out this fall, is based on Alexander's biography of J.D. Salinger, which has recently been republished. Alexander wrote Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen, an original screenplay about Kilgallen's investigation of the Kennedy assassination, for Twentieth Century Fox.
Alexander is the author of the plays Strangers in the Land of Canaan and Edge, which he directed. Developed at The Actors Studio, Edge, the critically acclaimed one-woman play about Sylvia Plath, ran in New York, where Angelica Torn received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination; London; and venues in other cities, among them Miami, where New Times named Torn Best Actress. Edge toured Australia and New Zealand and enjoyed a second run in New York. In all, Torn performed Edge 400 times. Alexander is also the director of a British revival of Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden; New York Stories, an evening of one-act plays by Paul Kane that ran in New York; and Brothers in Arms, a documentary film about John Kerry and Vietnam (First Run Features).
Alexander is a graduate of The Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa and a member of PEN American Center, the Authors Guild, and the Playwrights and Directors Unit of The Actors Studio. In the fall of 2002, he was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He lives in New York City.
This review is from: The Candidate: Behind John Kerry's Remarkable Run for the White House (Hardcover)
Alexander pens a concise review of the 2004 primary with what he calls an "insiders perspective." Unfortunately what results is not news but rather a simple historical review of what happened. This book is poor on analysis and perhaps even poorer on its account and its claims of access to the candidate and the campaign.
However, for those looking for a short read on the simple events of the 2004 Democratic primary, "The Candidate" will suffice. Unfortunately, if one is searching for the magical key to Kerry's historical turnaround or how the Dean machine fell apart, bitter disappointment is the only result.
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Forgive me while I start laughing. To me, Kerry always looked like a run-down, gaunt twin of the Eagles' much healthier looking Glenn Frey (makes you also wonder who really had the alledged coke habit)
Mr. Alexander's account is nothing but a slavish, fawning account why he liked a guy who besmirched his fellow servicemen, voted against almost every weapon development or intelligence-gathering operation designed to protect us before 9/11. A guy who went down to Nicaragua to endorse the Sandinistas, only to have those Marxist thugs make a fool of him by curtailing the liberties of the trampled Nicaraguan people. A rich patrician married to another rich patrician, both willing to increase our taxes, not only the rich like them, but the poor and middle class like the rest of us. Someone willing to outsource jobs even when Kerry was railing about "Benedict Arnold Corporations". Don't want to believe me? Just ask Teresa - or check those Heinz Ketchup bottles coming straight out of that well-known part of the Union called Canada.
And simply put, a big loser.
"Lincolnesque"? - no, to compare John Kerry to Honest Abe is a terrible insult to a brave, kind, decent man who was our greatest President. Mr. Alexander clearly needs to have his head examined.
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This review is from: The Candidate: Behind John Kerry's Remarkable Run for the White House (Hardcover)
This book truly shows the remarkable man John Kerry really is. It gets away from the portrayl the right-wing media/Fox News gives to this stoic man. I would recommend this book to anyone who is in search for the truth and tired of reading about the lies of those "Swift boat captains" who've shamed the political landscape for years to come.
This book deserves an excellent review.
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