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Politics Lost: From RFK to W: How Politicians Have Become Less Courageous and More Interested in Keeping Power than in Doing What's Right for America Paperback – June 19, 2007

by Joe Klein (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn’t holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters’ trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue. The question is: Why? The more urgent question is: What can be done about it?
Few people are more qualified to deal with both questions than Joe Klein.
There are many loud and opinionated voices on the political scene, but no one sees or writes with the clarity that this respected observer brings to the table. He has spent a lifetime enmeshed in politics, studying its nuances, its quirks, and its decline. He is as angry and fed up as the rest of us, so he has decided to do something about it—in these pages, he vents, reconstructs, deconstructs, and reveals how and why our leaders are less interested in leading than they are in the “permanent campaign” that political life has become.
The book opens with a stirring anecdote from the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Klein re-creates the scene of Robert Kennedy’s appearance in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, where he gave a gut-wrenching, poetic speech that showed respect for the audience, imparted dignity to all who listened, and quelled a potential riot. Appearing against the wishes of his security team, it was one of the last truly courageous and spontaneous acts by an American politician—and it is no accident that Klein connects courage to spontaneity. From there, Klein begins his analysis—campaign by campaign—of how things went wrong. From the McGovern campaign polling techniques to Roger Ailes’s combative strategy for Nixon; from Reagan’s reinvention of the Republican Party to Lee Atwater’s equally brilliant reinvention of behind-the-scenes strategizing; from Jimmy Carter to George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W.—as well as inside looks at the losing sides—we see how the Democrats become diffuse and frightened, how the system becomes unbalanced, and how politics becomes less and less about ideology and more and more about how to gain and keep power. By the end of one of the most dismal political runs in history—Kerry’s 2004 campaign for president—we understand how such traits as courage, spontaneity, and leadership have disappeared from our political landscape.
In a fascinating final chapter, the author refuses to give easy answers since the push for easy answers has long been part of the problem. But he does give thoughtful solutions that just may get us out of this mess—especially if any of the 2008 candidates happen to be paying attention.
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  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    June 19, 2007
  4. Dimensions
    5.19 x 0.62 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0767916018
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0767916011
  7. See all details
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Mary Jean Mayer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for a political year.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    A sad book that tells too many truths about political parties and how they are no longer about public service, but about preserving incumbencies by courting corporate puppeteers. Tells me a lot of stuff that I would rather not know, but I think everybody ought to start paying attention.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Steve Koss
    5.0 out of 5 stars American Presidential Politics as Train Wreck, Engineered by Pollsters and Consultants
    Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2007
    By Joe Klein's reckoning, the greatest scourge of political consultants in the past three decades has been the elimination of Turnip Days - and he may well be right. The peculiar name of this lost element of politics arises from the candicacy of Harry Truman in 1948. At his Democratic Party acceptance speech where he was challenging a do-nothing Republican Congress to reconvene on July 25, President Truman alluded to a Missouri tradition of planting turnips that day, rain or shine. According to Klein, it was a speech straight out of the man, loaded with words and references to Truman's own down-home roots. A genuine, non-scripted, non-manufactured moment in which America saw their President as the man he really was, warts and all. We've hardly had a Turnip Day moment since, and in Klein's view, it's been the ruination of American politics and the cause of horrendous candidacies (Gephardt, Doukakis, Kerry) and equally horrendous Presidencies (Carter, both Bushes, even parts of Reagan and Clinton).

    In its basic structure, POLITICS LOST is a history, a chronological retracing of American politics from Jimmy Carter to the 2004 Bush/Kerry election, with particular emphasis on pollsters and political consultants. In Klein's view, this new breed of unelected unknowns have evolved from advisors and strategists to incessant surveyors, focus group holders, and message and candidate micro-managers battling with near-paranoid fervor to suppress anything smacking of reality and spontaneity. As the author retraces successive Presidential election campaigns from Carter/Ford to Bush/Kerry, he introduces us to the little Oz-wizards pulling the strings from behind the curtains. Everything begins with pollster Pat Caddell. After that, it's Richard Wirthlin, John Sears, Bob Teeter, David Doak, Bob Shrum, Mark McKinnon, Dick Morris, James Carville, Ed Rollins, Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Joe Trippi, and a host of others. Even to readers for whom those names are already familiar, the stories are simultaneously fascinating and disturbing. Democrats and Repbublicans alike should feel a deep sense of shame over what their leaders have wrought in the last thirty years - hardly "democracy" as the Founding Fathers imagined it.

    Klein's negative attitude toward professional political consultancy picks up steam in his writing as he progresses chronologically, and justifiably so. By the turn of the millennium, Presidential political campaigns have become a national disgrace, a black mark on the entire concept of democracy. Candidacies are manufactured for emotion and appearance, devoid of substance and content, and the most telling moments in the last three elections have been gaffes or negative ads and attacks. Not surprisingly, the American electorate increasingly elects not to participate, as if a trip to the voting booth means pointlessly soiling one's hands in the whole nasty business. One of the conjectures in POLITICS LOST is that the entire process increases the likelihood that the country will end up with ineffectual Presidencies. From Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to Bush II, this certainly seems to be the case (with Clinton being the only pause in this steep slide into the intellectual and effectiveness abyss).

    In the book's final pages, Mr. Klein practically begs some future candidate to break this cycle and present himself or herself as just a normal human being. Say what you think and mean what you say; don't hide behind pages of polls and empty, feel-good, focus group-tested slogans. The author may indeed be onto something, judging at least in the Democratic candidates' case by people's continued collective unease with Hillary Clinton and their early surge of enthusiasm for Barack Obama (who appears to be less fresh and more scripted as time passes). As Klein might have it with regard to the so-called political pros, "a pox on all your houses." POLITICS LOST is a fascinating survey of recent Presidential campaign history and a worthwhile read for what it says about our leaders, our political processes, our democracy, and ourselves.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Gerard Wills
    4.0 out of 5 stars Politics Lost by Joe Klein is interesting and thought provoking
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Joe Klein has been around American politics, politicians, and election campaigns for many years. His energy and commitment is as much a tribute to him as his skill in writing.
    The book rambles a bit, it is almost anecdotal at times, but I have now adjusted to that style.
    The main point he makes, for me anyway, is that the honest and truly sincere candidate is being smothered by the consultants and the professional campaign managers and spin merchants. Not enough 'Turnip Days' and you have to read the book to understand that.
    Thanks Joe from a kiwi New Zealander who really wants America and Americans to succeed as they deserve to, but the politicians they get are the result of a destructive electoral process, and now you have a somewhat dysfunctional Congress, even though you have an amazing and intelligent President.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Michael Mathiesen
    2.0 out of 5 stars Joe Klein Proves in this BOOK, we need something NEW
    Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2007
    This book is boring in that there are no SOLUTIONS. Plenty of spotlight on the Problems. Like George W. Bush. The biggest problem in a leader we've ever suffered in our entire history. The man never once has done anything that helps ordinary citizens. He blocked Stem Cell research claiming that he knows for certain that no benefit, no cures would ever come from it. Laura even joined him on that, and she should know better, she has read a book.

    So, all of the books on politics right now are very bereft of solutions.

    But, there is a website where you can find Real Solutions to our problems. [...]

    Here, they are starting the 2nd American Revolution and when you think about it, that's what is really necessary. We need a new revolution because they have such absolute control over the media and the rest of us, it's impossible to get any thing fixed. They have a stranglehold on us. But the folks who started the 1st National Voting Block actually have something NEW and PRACTICAL to offer. Check them out. Tell them Amazon them sent you.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Dr. Wilson Triviño
    4.0 out of 5 stars Dirty business
    Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2012
    This election year has been uneventful, both top contenders for the presidency have played it safe and used the usual bag of tricks of negative ads and rhetoric.
    In Politics Lost: How America Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think Your're Stupid by Joe Klein, this political reporter goes back and traces the shift of the political landscape. There was a time that candidates fought for a cause and they were not so scripted.
    The book kicks off with a story of when Robert Kennedy went to a mostly black neighborhood and shared that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed. His words and the message came from the heart and it moved the crowd that day. He spoke of his brother also being killed by a white man and quoted Aeschylus who wrote "even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the human heart... until... in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
    Klein has covered eight Presidential campaigns and almost quit the business in 2000. He was brought back by the events of September 11 and notes there is no twelve step program for political junkies.
    The book only chronicles the campaigns up to 2004, Kerry and Bush battle, but is a good anecdotal analysis of how the dummying down of our electoral process has been a direct result of pollsters, campaign gurus, and modern media. The circular process of who wags the dogs in continuing the political process.
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