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"Hillsman
offers a challenge to anyone planning to
run for office, but his tone isn't preachy.
It's funny, personal, and trustworthy.
In short, it's everything political campaigns
should be." --PR WEEK
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Regardless
of November tallies, the real winner of this
year’s presidential race will
be "Election Industry, Inc.," says
Hillman-voters and qualified candidates will
lose out. While political reporters, pundits
and professors often prescribe treatments for
ailing democratic processes during an election
year, Hillsman, a seasoned political marketer
for such candidates as the late Paul Wellstone,
Jesse Ventura and Ralph Nader, brings a unique
and righteously outraged perspective to the
mix.
In this volume-part memoir,
part campaign handbook-he attacks the den
of Washington,
D.C.-based political consultants and party
officials ("an inside-the-Beltway collective
of toadies, fakes, crooks, character assassins,
racketeers, party apologists, false scientists,
phony experts, self-aggrandizers, backscratchers,
and backstabbers") and recalls his own
strategies for promoting candidates and enfranchising
voters.
Third party challengers
(or even outsider party members like Howard
Dean and John McCain),
Hillsman says, face incredible obstacles
from the Republican and Democratic elite:
an onslaught
of "toxic" political advertisements,
character assassinations and sound-bite responses
to real issues. Sometimes Hillsman’s
forceful prose, embellished with sardonic zingers,
turns from entertaining to repetitive. For
instance, after citing a poll of political
professionals that revealed 37 percent of them
thought it acceptable to use negative advertising
to hold down voter turnout and focus on insult
rather than on issues, he adds the coda: "Political
consultants think that’s smart. I think
it’s despicable." Ten pages later,
he cites the same poll and repeats the coda
almost word for word. Flaws aside, though,
anyone who shares Hillsman’s ire at the
current state of electoral politics will enjoy
this maverick tract and its wicked upbraiding
of establishment campaigning.
Copyright © Reed Business Information,
a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved. |
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Growing
dissatisfaction with politics as usual and the
way the presidential election is run will boost
the appeal of this book. Hillsman helped outsiders
Paul Wellstone's senatorial, Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial,
and Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns.
The author
is critical of what he calls Election Industry,
Inc.--the political parties, pollsters, consultants,
fund raisers, junk mailers, media handlers, special
interests, and lobbyists who have taken over
American politics. Drawing on 15 years spent working
with
political outsiders, Hillsman offers a critique
of American politics and a handbook for the new
political landscape, including the growing influence
of the Internet. He outlines how political parties
control candidates and shut out newcomers with
new ideas, how big money influences politics,
and how professionals use negative advertising
to deliberately
discourage voters from going to the polls, and
provides an insider's look at the independent-minded
politics of a range of figures, including Ross
Perot, Warren Beatty, and Arianna Huffington.
This
is a fascinating look at current American politics
and the challenges for those who want to change
politics as usual. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association.
All rights reserved |
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