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Terry McAuliffe

Steve Kettmann

What A Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals Hardcover – Bargain Price, January 23, 2007

by Terry McAuliffe (Author), Steve Kettmann (Author)

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“I thought I knew Terry McAuliffe as well as anyone, but this time he surprised even me. Who knew Terry could sit still long enough to give us a book this good? What a Party! is a must-read for all of us who love politics, believe in public service, and know that laughter is often the best survival strategy.”

—President Bill Clinton

“No one knows more about American politics than Terry McAuliffe. He gives
us some remarkable insights and knows how to make his accounts both humorous
and informative.”

—President Jimmy Carter

“I’ve often said Terry’s energy could light up a city, and readers of this book will know why. Terry’s excitement for politics—and life—is evident on every page.” —Senator Hillary Clinton For more than twenty-five years, Terry McAuliffe has been at the epicenter of American politics. Just out of Catholic University in Washington, Terry took a position with the Carter-Mondale campaign and quickly became one of the campaign’s chief fund-raisers—and hasn’t looked back since. The list of Terry´s former mentors, friends, and close associates in the nation’s capital reads like a who’s who of legendary Democrats: Tip O’Neill. Jimmy Carter. Dick Gephardt. Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton. Al Gore. The list goes on and on. Terry has fought hard for the Democratic Party his entire life and, as Bill Clinton reveals here for the first time, he was the first one in the party to see opportunity in the Republican gains in the 1994 Congressional elections.
Without question the most successful fund-raiser in political history, Terry established himself as a heavyweight Democratic strategist and leader who was George W. Bush´s most vocal and persistent critic during the first four years of the Bush 43 presidency. He earned rave reviews even from former critics for his groundbreaking work as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, pulling the DNC out of debt for the first time in its history. Terry has served as a confidant and adviser to President Clinton and countless presidential candidates, a mediator among party leaders, the chairman of a national convention and presidential inaugural, and a forceful spokesman for the party—all without losing his reputation as a colorful, fun-loving character liked and respected even by his Republican adversaries.
What a Party! is a fascinating, hilarious, and provocative look at the life of one of Washington’s legendary figures. From wrestling an alligator to running the Democratic National Committee to his friendship with President Clinton, Terry McAuliffe’s wonderful memoir covers it all and is, without doubt, the political book of the year.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Thomas Dunne Books
Publication date

January 23, 2007
Dimensions

6.13 x 1.38 x 9.25 inches
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Terry McAuliffe
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Hardcover
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About the Author

Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, legendary fund-raiser, and confidant of Presidents, lives in McLean, Virginia, with his wife, Dorothy, and their five children. Steve Kettmann has written for publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, and Salon.com. The author of One Day at Fenway, Steve cowrote the #1 New York Times bestseller, Juiced, with Jose Canseco.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One
I remember walking home from Bellevue Country Club in Syracuse late one afternoon when I was fourteen years old, and with each step I was more depressed. I had just spent five hours caddying, lugging two heavy golf bags up and down hills for a grand total of eight bucks. I didn’t mind the work. I’ve never minded the work. No, what had me distraught was the math. No matter how I turned it around in my head, it was clear I had already thrown my life away. I was going to have to face the cold, hard truth that I was a failure. What else could I call myself? There I was wasting my time, working for a measly two bucks an hour. I was never going to put any capital together at that rate!

“I’ve got to start my own business,” I announced to myself as I walked the mile home from the golf course.

I was aware there were certain obstacles to starting a business at age fourteen. I could not open my own legal practice just yet, most likely, and I probably couldn’t sell insurance either. I kept asking myself: What would people hire a young kid to do? One answer was house painting, but that just wasn’t me. I’d leave that to other guys my age. Then, as I turned onto Dundee Road toward home, I saw an older guy in front of his house sealing his driveway. He was all sweaty and irritated-looking, but he was stuck out there. The winters in Syracuse are so brutal that everyone has to seal their driveways often by putting down a layer of hot tar emulsion liquid, which is dirty, nasty work.

“You know what?” I said out loud, walking faster now. “They’ll hire a kid to do that. Nobody wants to do it himself and get that hot black tar all over you.”

I didn’t waste any time acting on my idea. I hurried home and typed up a letter announcing my new McAuliffe Driveway Maintenance business to all our neighbors. The next morning I handed those out all over the neighborhood, and by the end of that first day I had six jobs.

“Mom, can we go to Kmart?” I shouted across the house. “I’ve got to buy five-gallon buckets of tar!”

If you’ve never sealed a driveway, let me tell you, there’s not much to it. You take a broom and sweep away any dust or debris, then dump the hot tar onto the driveway and smooth it out with a squeegee. I had a little red wagon to wheel the bucket of tar from job to job. I hired friends to help me and mulled over my biggest problem—tar. It didn’t make sense to keep buying five-gallon containers at Kmart. The next step was Agway, a huge agricultural collective where I could buy fifty-gallon drums of concentrated tar. You had to dilute it, four gallons of water for every gallon of tar, so it went four times as far and you could increase your profit fourfold. The trouble was, those fifty-gallon drums were huge—and heavy. I was going to have to come up with a way to transport them.

“Hi, Uncle Billy,” I said over the phone. “Listen, I need help.”

Billy Byrne, my uncle, ran Byrne Dairy.

“I’ve got to start buying wholesale,” I told him. “This retail is killing me. I need to move a lot more tar around. Do you have any old dairy trucks? Can I buy one?”

Uncle Billy was having a hard time keeping up with all this.

“Well, we’ve got that truck graveyard out there in Cicero,” he said. “We’ll talk about it and see what you want.”

Billy said to call him back later, but I couldn’t wait. My buddy Joey Hartnett drove me up old Highway 11 to Cicero, just north of Syracuse, and we found Uncle Billy’s fleet of more than fifty old Byrne Dairy milk trucks all lined up and rusting with the keys in them. I had come prepared: I had a battery, a can of gas, spark plugs, and quarts of oil. We found a truck we liked and I put in a battery, replaced the spark plugs, added oil, and emptied some gas into its old tank.

“Keep your fingers crossed, Joey,” I said.

I turned the key and the old dairy truck actually started. To this day I can still hear the rumbling of that big old engine and feel the hum of that big steering wheel vibrating in my hands. Man, the excitement was unbelievable. I was in business! This was the start of everything for me. The next morning, when my parents woke up, they saw that old Byrne Dairy milk truck sitting out front in the driveway. They were almost as surprised as my uncle was when I called him later that morning.

“I found a truck I liked,” I said.

“We’ll talk about it, Terry,” he said. “Why don’t you come down next week?”

“Uncle Billy, you don’t understand,” I told him. “I have the truck here at the house.”

He was speechless. It had never dawned on him that I would head out to the lot on my own. There were liability issues, title issues—all kinds of things to think about. I just blew through all that. Uncle Billy was taken aback, but I think he respected that I was a young hustler. I got the title and license plates and we found some old brown house paint to slap on the truck. We put lettering on there, too, so anyone who saw us coming would know we were mcauliffe driveway maintenance.

Eventually I decided driveways were not enough.

“Excuse me, I’m here to see Mr. Higgins,” I told the secretary at the Syracuse Savings Bank.

Tom Higgins was the president of the bank, and his parking lots were in bad shape.

“I’m sorry, Mr. . . . ?” the secretary asked me, trying not to laugh. “Do you have an appointment?”

I was sixteen years old, a skinny kid wearing one of my older brother’s hand-me-down dress shirts with a big, ridiculous tie.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I need to see him. This is very important. This is life or death for his business.”

I was so serious, the secretary finally did laugh—and then she ushered me in to see the bank president.

“Mr. Higgins, let me tell you something,” I said, not wasting any time. “You’re a prominent businessman in this city. I want to show you what your business looks like.”

He was ready to shoo me out of there in nothing flat, but I’d brought one of those cheesy photo albums with me and I think I’d piqued his curiosity. I’d prepared a nice portfolio of the potholes, cracks, and ruts in his parking lots.

“This reflects on your company, sir,” I told Mr. Higgins as he flipped through the pictures.

Then he got to the second half and saw all the shots of smooth, dark, picture-perfect parking lots.

“This is what’s happening with other banks,” I told Mr. Higgins. “They are better looking. Your competitors are gaining a competitive edge against you.”

I got the job. We repaved all the Syracuse Savings Bank parking lots. Then I went after fire stations and we started repaving them, too. The business just kept growing. Our phone at home rang at all hours, with people wanting their driveways sealed.

“McAuliffe Driveway Maintenance,” my mother would say every time she answered our phone, like she was in an office.

One time my mother, Millie, was riding along with me in the passenger’s seat when the rotted floor of the truck gave out and all four legs of her chair poked through and scraped the road as we drove along. You should have seen the look on Millie’s face as she bounced up and down driving along the highway! Another time the old clutch gave out coming up a steep hill and I hit the brake, which sent the rear doors of the truck flying open. A freshly loaded fifty-gallon drum bounced out the back and accelerated downhill fast, flinging superthick black tar all over the place.

“I’ve got a big crisis,” I told my dad from the first pay phone I could find.

He heard me out, and then surprised me.

“Terry, it’s your business,” he said. “You get all the profits. That means you deal with any issues that come up. Like this.”

I couldn’t believe how much thick, gooey tar was oozing down the hill. I put down cones to block off traffic, whipped out my trusty squeegee and spent a couple hours smoothing out the tar across the street and getting as much of the excess into the sewer as I could. It was miserable work, but every time I drove past that street I could smile to myself at how good it looked and get a reminder that when you start your own business, you have to clean up your own messes. No one else can do that for you.

My sister-in-law Patty, Tommy’s wife, still laughs at the first impression I made on her. I took some of the money I made with McAuliffe Driveway Maintenance and invested in a snowblower and started my winter business. I would get up at four o’clock in the morning during the darkest, coldest days of winter and blow snow off driveways and sidewalks. I’d usually get paid with single dollar bills, which I’d jam into my pockets, and by the time I got home they would be a wet, crumpled mess. I would have been embarrassed to show up at my new bank, Syracuse Savings, to deposit money looking that bad. So instead I ironed each and every bill, spraying on a little starch for good measure. By the time I was done, those bills looked like they had just been wheeled out of the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The first time Patty met me, I was in the middle of ironing a big load of dollar bills and she just burst out laughing.

I always loved selling. The year I turned twelve I got a...

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001CJS60O
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition (January 23, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.38 x 9.25 inches

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4.4 45 ratings

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Terry McAuliffe
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Steve Kettmann
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Steve Kettmann is the co-director of a writers' retreat center in Northern California called the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in Northern California www.wellstoneredwoods.org and Publisher of Wellstone Books. He's the author or co-author of nine books, including four New York Times bestsellers. His most recent is "Baseball Maverick: How Sandy Alderson Revolutionized Baseball and Revived the New York Mets."
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Richard of Connecticut

Every Page was FUN to Read - It doesn't get any BETTER - RUSH OUT to BUY IT!!!!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 12, 2007

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Does a political book get any better than this one? I don't think so. This is one of the finest books on politics you can ever hope to read. It's entertaining and insightful on every subject it touches. This is coming from a reader who is usually on the other side of the political arena. McAuliffe's personality was absolutely captured in this book. His contagious commitment to his party, and the people he was loyal to is evident throughout every page.

Is the book honest; does it give the unvarnished truth about what happened during the times and events that McAuliffe is writing about? Of course not, nor would you expect it to. When you read this book, you are looking for an understanding of what it was like for the dominant financial fundraiser of the Democratic Party of his generation to do what he did. From that perspective, it just doesn't get any better than McAuliffe's book.

It is not a short book either. It is close to 400 pages done with a moderate size font, but in those pages, the man demonstrates a joy for life, and it's a life on a big scale. He knows the movers and the shakers, the real guys and the pretend guys. It's all here, and for the reader you get the inside scoop on life at the top of one of the two major political parties in our land.

Talk about bias though. McAuliffe does sometimes speak about history and events as though he's the only one who's got the story straight. He also tends to think of the Democrats as being pure as the driven snow, and the Republicans as though they are in bed with the devil. Only partisans live that nonsense.

The author has to be forgiven for his partisanship because he has so much invested in the GAME. You are not reading the book to learn about history. You are living this man's life in these 400 pages, and it feels very real. Some of the fabulous stories you will read in this book include:

· How's he's trying to get a couple of hundred grand out of a guy by inviting him to a party. He tells him Sammy Davis Jr. is coming and will be singing, even though Davis had been dead 10 years.

· He goes to a guy in California to get a million bucks and the guy brings his friend who is dressed like a bum. The bum takes out a wrinkled check, has holes in his t-shirt, and writes a check for a million also.

· The stories on Lew Wasserman, the man who ran Hollywood for decades are priceless. McAuliffe asks Wasserman how his desk could be absolutely clean, not a piece of paper on it. Wasserman tells him, "If I get a piece of paper here, I either throw it out or act on it. I don't let anything sit." What a priceless piece of advice to the rest of us.

· A fundraiser is brought to meet former Vice President Mondale in 1984. The fundraiser happens to be gay unbeknownst to Mondale. He tells the VP, there's something I need to tell you. "I've come out of the closet." After the man leaves, Mondale ask in a serious voice, "What was he doing in my closet."?

· The stories on Tip O'Neill are nothing short of spectacular. Tip tells McAuliffe about JFK and Tip doing a fundraiser. At the end of the evening JFK asks Tip how did we make out. Tip responds we got cash and checks. The future President comes back, "You take the checks, I'll take the cash."

· His stories on boar hunting are dead on accurate. I've done this, and the man knows what he is talking about.

· He's got a couple of tips about fundraising that you could never hope to learn unless someone passed them on to you. They include always accept a drink from a potential donor. It loosens every body up. Don't let anybody get drunk however, because they might not remember the amount they committed to. When doing a fundraiser always use a smaller room than you need. It gives off a more successful appearance.

When I read any book I am looking for that one thought that makes the whole book worthwhile. On page 200 I found that thought. President Clinton talks about what he believes in passionately.

"Don't let somebody bad-mouth you out of the game, and then sit on the sidelines and lay down. Don't let them score without trying to tackle them. If you're going to play, you ought to know going in what to expect...So half the time when you get hit upside the head, people don't necessarily believe it. What they're really interested in is: how are you going to respond? That's how they can get some guidance as to what sort of President you'd be, or senator, or congressman, or governor."

The second fabulous insight was a statement that President Clinton made about what he learned from Nelson Mandela about anger and hatred, when he asked Mandela, "....didn't you really hate those who had imprisoned you?"

Mandela responded, "Of course I did, for many years. They took the best years of my life. They abused me physically and mentally. I didn't get to see my children grow up. I hated them. Then one day when I was working in the quarry, hammering the rocks, I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heart. Those they could not take without my permission. I decided not to give them away." Mandela then told Clinton, "Neither should you." P164

Read the book, it's a BLAST.

Richard Stoyeck

12 people found this helpful

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Neil P.

Mixed Bag McAuliffe

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 22, 2022

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I consider myself a centrist, slightly left leaning but have a long history of voting for both parties. Having read some of the reviews I expected a far more insightful and entertaining memoir. The first third of the book with McAuliffe's background and formative years was enjoyable, but once he started launching into his grade school criticisms of the GOP and George Bush I lost interest. The bulk of his acerbic insults were directed at Bush, without corroboration. And in one instance quotes Barbara Bush third hand.

Ironically, I found his defense of and character study of Bill and Hillary Clinton enjoyable and it gave me a different insight into their family.

Over all I was disappointed. Had McAuliffe's co-writer reined in his more childish insults it would have been a far better read.

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Karlis Streips

Loved, loved, LOVED this book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2007

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I have to say first of all that I am a member of the Terry McAuliffe choir. I sing second tenor on the songs "Bill Clinton Was a Great President", "Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot" (with words by Al Franken), "The Republicans Stole the 2000 Election Like the Thieves They Are", "The Republicans Should Be So Ashamed of Themselves That They Should Shut Down Immediately", etc. That said, not everyone who conducts that particular choir writes with as much panache, elan and joie-de-vivre as this man does. This is a wonderfully, wonderfully written book about the down and dirty of politics, and Terry McAuliffe certainly does the down and dirty of politics just about as well as anyone. He was a close Friend of Bill and offers really touching portraits of President Clinton and also Hillary Clinton. You can hear him smacking his lips as he talks about the way in which he savages Republicans and how disappointed he was in the wooses who surrounded Jim Kerry and made him play nice when Bush and his Darth Vader vice president were playing as evil as they could possibly be. This is a top-of-the-line political book for anyone who is interested in party and presidential politics in the United States, and I recommend it with every bit of my being!

6 people found this helpful

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Alan Gabelman

A telling look inside of politics since Carter

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2016

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If you like politics, this is a great story (especially if you're a Democrat). McCauliffe gives an inside view of politics, going back to the Carter years, that is priceless. He talks about the politicians as real people, not just who we see on TV and read about on our phones, including funny anecdotes that humanize larger-than-life people like Bill, Hillary and others. McCauliffe, the master fundraiser, also gets into the mechanics and realities of raising money for a political campaign, a national convention, a presidential library. . .the list goes on. The book is a bit old now - a lot has happened since its conclusion in 2006 - but still a great read. Maybe Terry McCauliffe will run for president someday.

3 people found this helpful

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Bruce P.

Good anthology of recent Democratic political history.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 3, 2019

Verified Purchase

Terry McAuliffe is an energetic person in this biographical book. From his driveway repair business as a teenager, to raising money for years for Democratic causes and politicians, to his business ventures, it is all here. Perhaps a bit wordy in spots, and sometimes too much detail, but an entertaining read throughout.

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Mom45

If you want to get to know Terry McAuliffe -- read this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 9, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book is a ton of fun to read, and very funny. Terry McAuliffe comes across just as he is, earnest, hard working and dedicated to his friends and family. It was very interesting to read about his relationship with Bill Clinton, and why he stuck by him through thick and thin. The guy is a risk taker and at the same time results oriented -- something we need in our politicians today.

One person found this helpful

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Alan Krishnan

Most critical read in USA at this time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 17, 2019

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A book I first read over 12 years ago, continues to be great read with critical insight into the political field in the USA

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Chorusline

What a Party! What a great read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

I'm a fan of Terry's and thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I like firsthand accounts of the goings on in politics. I guess you could say I'm a political junkie. If you are also, I recommend reading this, and if you're not, you'd probably enjoy it anyway.

One person found this helpful

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What A Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals Hardcover – Bargain Price, January 23, 2007

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