Running Against the Machine; the Mailer-Breslin Campaign [Hardcover]

peter manso (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday (1969)
• ASIN: B000LEAJ3S
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,690,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Noble Calling of Politics, July 4, 2007

By 

Gerald E. Weaver (Wichita, Kansas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Reading this book brought back many memories. I had previously read many of the speeches in this book in "Managing Mailer" by Joe Flaherty, who was the campaign manager for the Mailer-Breslin ticket in the 1969 New York mayoral race. I also remember seeing Mailer and Breslin in many talk show appearances during that period, usually on the Dick Cavett show. They were always engaging and full of ideas.

What strikes me about this book is the difficulty the candidates had in being taken seriously. The press, in particular, refused to take them seriously, to Mailer's considerable disgust. However, toward the end a 6/12/69 column by Tom Wicker in the New York Times stated: "for the first time the fundamental reorganization of a great American political entity has been made the central theme of a campaign for major office."

The "fundamental reorganization" referred to their ideas for making New York City the 51st State, and for returning power to the neighborhoods. These ideas were advanced in a powerful and articulate way throughout the campaign, and were based on the premise that the liberal approach of pouring money into programs to benefit the inner city had failed. After four years of John Lindsay's liberalism, the city was near bankruptcy, the welfare bill was staggering, and strikes by municipal workers brought the transit and garbage collection systems to a standstill. Instead of imposing programs upon the people from above, the idea of giving each neighborhood the money to run its own police, fire departments, schools, etc., seemed attractive.

The candidates themselves worked very hard during he campaign. They received around 41,000 votes and more importantly, they stimulated some discussion of the inner city problems on a level higher than the traditional band-aid approach.

Politics is a noble calling, and one wishes that people with ideas would run for office more often. The pessimist in me says why should they, they always get clobbered, while the optimist in me says it is worth the effort, because you never know when you may have planted a seed which will flower in later years, or when you might inspire someone else to take a stab at public service.