Customer Reviews

Run the Other Way: Fixing the Two-Party System, One Campaign at a Time

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I highly recommend this book. This book works because while it points out the fault of both political parties it shares awesome stories of the little guy winning. The information about Ventura is fascinating and heart warming. I also found the info about McCain to be very interesting. I was surprised to find out how close he was to running as an independent candidate. You will also learn what the parties did to keep him from running.

Bill Hillsman builds an interesting case for revamping our political system. His experience from the national to the local political arenas is impressive. He is funny and witty and provides a great read! This book is lots of fun for everyone interesting in learning how elections are really won and lost!! Have fun.

After the press has built up its latest darling political candidates and subsequently torn them back down again we are often left with a bad taste in our mouths. This book lays the blame on our political system itself. But what I found most interesting were the behind-the-scenes anecdotes from Bill's experiences on various campaign trails. Those are the stories the press all too often overlooks and the ones voters want to know about most.

Insightful book on our broken political process, made an enjoyable read due to Hillsman's slightly subversive sense of humor.
Provides a great insider's view of campaigns from Nader to Ventura.
No one else is covering this territory as well as this author.

I first read this book back in 2004 after meeting Hillsman when he spoke to a political fellowship program I was in. He is a dynamic individual with a common sense approach to political marketing. We no longer live in a time where people will read extensive pamphlets that were more akin to magazines. You reach people these days through television and 30 seconds is typically all you have. As Hillsman illustrates those 30 seconds can be jam packed with platform information and discussion of various issues, but they will not be memorable--or they can be viewed as marketing for the politician and can educate, but serve to capture the voter's interest which will yield far more attention to a candidate and their issues. It seems that candidates are beginning to understand this in the youtube age, but when this book was initially published this simple idea was near revolutionary.

I purchased two copies of this book for friends running for political office in my area and I would for any other friends running or interested in helping a campaign. The downside to this book is that many of its gems are cloaked in a certain self aggrandizement and villification of "the election industry" or "election, inc." or some term like that that Hillsman employs. Similar to Keith Ferrazzi's "Never Eat Lunch Alone," if you can get past the self praise you will find some excellent lessons. Highly recommended for anyone interested in campaign marketing and advertizing.

This book has a lot of potential, and Bill Hillsman seems like an interesting fellow, but in the end it was fairly disappointing book. There are three problems that I have with it.

First, you would really think that Hillsman is the most brilliant man alive, forced to work with/for people who are unable to tie their shoes. It is rare to find a paragraph that does not at some way or another implicitly or explicitly revolve around how brilliant Hillsman thinks he is. He can see through all lies, he can create perfect campaigns (in fact he never fails!), and his wisdom fundamentally alters campaigns as we know it. It gets really old, really fast. Yes, we understand that you think highly of yourself and little of just about everyone else in the world, can we please move forward?

Second, his book focuses on his fight against "Election Industry, Inc", which is incredibly poorly defined and really seems to just be everyone other than Bill Hillsman. EII seems to be everyone involved in the political process, and that they all work together to keep the common man down and are so blundering incompetent that he presents them as caricatures of political analysts. However, it remains consistently unclear why these individuals have this power and authority when they are so bad at their jobs and everyone hates them. Why isn't Bill Hillsman and his firm not the top firm in the country? All that you need to do is be creative and know your audience!! It seems that EII are literally everyone involved in the system that is not Bill Hillsman (remember above!). It's a pretty patronizing and generalist position that he takes, which really creates questions about his credibility.

Third, his overall argument doesn't make sense. He argues that the two parties are largely interchangeable (sure), and that people need to just support either "real" candidates (which even in his own examples just become cogs in the machine) and support third parties. However, he never argues why the third parties are inherently different/superior, they just are. It is really a knee jerk position that seems as disingenuous as the ones that he is criticizing.

In short, the case studies that he uses are kind of interesting and it's a book that is pretty easy to read without any background information. It is however as a book rather flawed, and not something that I would recommend reading. Hillsman's wit and analysis are enjoyable, and I imagine he would be a cool person to grab a beer with.