Customer Reviews

Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting (Politics Media)

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Raymond Strother's warts-and-all memoir of his life as a political consultant is a fun, must-read for all students of American politics. Strother's career began when there was still some innocence in campaigning, and winds up during the frustrating years of ego-driven hacks whose self-importance overshadows their candidates, to the detriment of government. Ray Strother's genuinity was formed the old-fashioned way: he grew up poor and learned to appreciate other people.

Strother's tales of Southern political skirmishes will entertain. He's a smooth storyteller who should write more, now that he's out of the maelstrom of the Washington kill-or-be-killed consultant circuit.

Caveat: I am a Republican, and although Strother's life has been spent around Democrats, his tales are compelling across the board.

Ray Strother's chronicle of the industry that brings us our leaders is fascinating. His story is also an "American Success Story". From the giants of the U.S. Senate includingRussell Long (recently passed) and Lloyd Bentsen to today's leaders in the Senate - Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Zell Miller - Strother has woven a tapestry of stories that enthral and make us consider our democracy.

This is a first-rate, fast-read of an industry that is seldom discussed but that brings us world leaders. Ad agency execs marvel at their brilliance but at the end of the day they sell sugar water to children. Strother has given an insight to a world seldom seen, but of importance to all of us.

Get the book - read it and pass it around. This is one of those books that flys below the radar but could become a movie.

happy reading

The publishing world is awash with simplistic and incomplete "how-to" books. Veteran political consultant Raymond Strother, however, has written a thoroughly instructive political consulting text book, and it reads like a novel! Honorably and honestly, he has succeeded in creating a tome useful for academics and practitioners alike. He illustrates, through an accounting of his own career, why political consulting deserves to be treated and taught as a profession.
It is the emotion of this book that is palpable and raw and real that offers the best insights, however. The book may not sit well with the weak-hearted, lazy or naive, but for politically-driven persons with a longing desire to serve, the book has immeasurable value. If you ascribe to and want to help lift up the highest ideals of political service, involvement and enlightenment, then buy this book for your permanent collection. Compare your own bewildering consulting experiences to painful lessons learned by him. Liberate your political soul. Mr. Strother has made a difference; maybe you can, too.

Strother helped create the modern day political consultants. And in an age of "up by the bootstraps American story" his is solid. He came far fast.

This entertaining book cuts to the quick and tells the story of a very hidden industry. Media consultants bring you the leaders of the free world and you have no idea who they are. Second rate actors in Hollywood movies that don't matter a lick to mankind are heralded in pop magazines. But this is a look into a world that matters.

Read it and you'll understand much more about the government around you. And you'll laugh a gooo bit while learning.

Strother, a Texas bred Democrat consultant who served as a mentor to better known figures such as James Carville, recounts his experiences in the rough and tumble world of politics. In many hands, this could have been a very factual, dry and boring book. Luckily for the reader, Strother is an uproarious storyteller.

The son of a fervent union man in Port Arthur, Texas, Strother more or less falls into the political consulting business by default. He begins his career in Louisana, a hotbed of corruption and questionable ethics. Thru his journey, we relive his often painful and hilarious campaign experiences with country singer Jimmie Davis, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton.

Current politics are dirty business and not for the weak of heart. Idealists are often rudely discarded before they even realize what's happened. Strother considers himself a man of integrity in a profession that increasingly looks at such a trait as a weakness. He not only has to deal with Republican adversaries but underhanded tactics by members of his own party. Strother is honest in his analysis of his work and colleagues and spares no one including other Democrats who employed dirty tricks against his firm.

No matter what side your political beliefs fall, this is a good read if you want to understand how politics work behind the scenes.

Books about politics by insiders get most of the business right, but only Ray Strother tells you what it is really like to work in national politics in plain, unhyped prose.

I had the pleasure of visiting with Raymond last week in Montana,and hearing him tell some of the stories that were not in the book was an interesting evening.

Even though I have lived in La. all of my life so many of the stories in the book I had never heard!Raymond brought them all to life.

I was asked to review this book. I can't. I wrote it. Also, it represents the glory and squander of my life which is sometimes intollerable. I would never read it again but I hope you do. Nine out of ten political hacks love it. More books to come. Does anyone out there have a copy of my novel, Cottonwood, they could sell me?

This book is for political old-timers (like me) and people who want a clear-eyed perspective on the business of politics in the closing years of the Twentieth Century.

Reading this in 2008, I found the technology dated, but that's no real problem because this book is ultimately about the people who play politics at the top level -- for all the marbles. Technologies change, but people thirsting for power rarely do, making the subject of the book eternal.

There are fascinating portraits of legendary politicians -- from Lloyd Bentsen and John Cornelius Stennis to Gary Hart and a particularly unflattering section about Bill Clinton. Strother doesn't pull his punches and this is what elevates "Falling Up" above most books about the practical side of politics.

Strother admirably doesn't paint a rosy self-portrait, either. While his upbringing and earl years are interesting enough, passages about his self-doubt, occasional professional vanity and hardcore ambition allow the reader into the mind of a top political operative/consultant. If anything gets wearying in the autobiographical portions, it's Strother's mantra about how was "hedonistic" when he was younger. So maybe he was, but he should know the repetitive confessions of the reformed are more appropriate suited to a revival tent than an otherwise spellbinding book about political machinations.

That is a small quibble and the only one. For political pros, wannabes or savvy spectators, "Falling Up" is a grand read by a master storyteller.

Having gotten to hear him speak about it at a book signing immediately piqued my curiosity. The moment I started reading this book, I was hooked on it. Through personal anecdotes and experiences, Ray Strother relates his fascinating life story as not only one of the most able political consultants, but also one of the field's most decent people.