The Carnival Campaign tells the fascinating story of the pivotal 1840 presidential campaign of General William Henry Harrison and John Tyler—"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." Pulitzer Prize–nominated former Wall Street Journal reporter Ronald Shafer relates in a colorful, entertaining style how the campaign marked a series of "firsts" that changed politicking forever: the first campaign as mass entertainment; the first "image campaign," in which strategists portrayed Harrison as a poor man living in a log cabin sipping hard cider (he lived in a mansion and drank only sweet cider); the first time big money was a factor; the first time women could openly participate; and more. While today's electorate has come to view campaigns that emphasize style over substance as a matter of course, this book shows voters how it all began.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Michael C. Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, presents a deeply reported account of the 2020 presidential campaign that details how Donald J. Trump became the first incumbent in three decades to lose reelection—and the only one whose defeat culminated in a violent insurrection. Beginning with President Trump’s first impeachment and ending with his second, FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION chronicles the inside-the-room deliberations between Trump and his campaign team as they opened 2020 with a sleek political operation built to harness a surge of momentum from a bullish economy, a unified Republican Party, and a string of domestic and foreign policy successes—only to watch everything unravel when fortunes suddenly turned. With first-rate sourcing cultivated from five years of covering Trump in the White House and both of his campaigns, Bender brings readers inside the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and into the front row of the movement’s signature mega-rallies for the story of an epic election-year convergence of COVID, economic collapse, and civil rights upheaval—and an unorthodox president’s attempt to battle it all. Fresh interviews with Trump, key campaign advisers, and senior administration officials are paired with an exclusive collection of internal campaign memos, emails, and text messages for scores of never-before-reported details about the campaign. FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION is the inside story of how Trump lost, and the definitive account of his final year in office that draws a straight line from the president’s repeated insistence that he would never lose to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol that imperiled one of his most loyal lieutenants—his own vice president.
“I wasn’t lucky. I deserved it.” - Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher The Political Campaign “How-to” Guide is a book that offers step-by-step guidelines on how to win an election as well as providing answers to questions a candidate may have about campaign planning. Whether running for Chief, mayor, reeve, councillor, MLA, MP or trustee in an indigenous, provincial, federal, municipal or school board election, this detailed book will provide candidates with the knowledge they need to run a successful campaign. Nolan Crouse, MBA, CCMP(TM) served as councillor and mayor in Canada for 13 years. In this book, he shares the secrets to his success in winning four consecutive election campaigns. From making the initial decision to run for office, to putting together an effective campaign team and brand, to fundraising, door knocking, message delivery and advertising – all the way to election day and beyond – this book offers valuable tips, insights, knowledge and tactics that have been proven to be useful and effective. Complete with checklists, great stories, images and examples, The Political Campaign “How-to” Guide is a must-read for anyone with an interest in running for public office for the first time or running for re-election in Canada. Most of the key principles also apply to all orders of elected office in the United States and many other democracies around the world.
Union general, federal judge, presidential contender, and cabinet officer—Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana stands as an enigmatic character in the politics of the Gilded Age, one who never seemed comfortable in the offices he sought. This first scholarly biography not only follows the turns of his career but seeks also to find the roots of his disaffection. Entering politics as a Whig, Gresham shortly turned to help organize the new Republican Party and was a contender for its presidential nomination in the 1880s. But he became popular with labor and with the Populists and closed his political career by serving as secretary of state under Grover Cleveland. In reviewing Gresham's conduct of foreign affairs, Charles W. Calhoun disputes the widely held view that he was an economic expansionist who paved the way for imperialism. Gresham, instead, is seen here as a traditionalist who tried to steer the country away from entanglements abroad. It is this traditionalism that Calhoun finds to be the clue to Gresham's career. Troubled with self-doubt, Gresham, like the Cato of old, sought strength in a return to the republican virtues of the Revolutionary generation. Based on a thorough use of the available resources, this will stand as the definitive biography of an important figure in American political and diplomatic history, and in its portrayal of a man out of step with his times it sheds a different light on the politics of the Gilded Age.
Because of its extraordinary consequences and because of Abraham Lincoln's place in the American pantheon, the presidential election of 1860 is probably the most studied in our history. But perhaps for the same reasons, historians have focused on the contest of Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas in the northern free states and John Bell versus John C. Breckinridge in the slaveholding South. In The Election of 1860 a preeminent scholar of American history disrupts this familiar narrative with a clearer and more comprehensive account of how the election unfolded and what it was actually about. Most critically, the book counters the common interpretation of the election as a referendum on slavery and the Republican Party's purported threat to it. However significantly slavery figured in the election, The Election of 1860 reveals the key importance of widespread opposition to the Republican Party because of its overtly anti-southern rhetoric and seemingly unstoppable rise to power in the North after its emergence in 1854. Also of critical importance was the corruption of the incumbent administration of Democrat James Buchanan—and a nationwide revulsion against party. Grounding his history in a nuanced retelling of the pre-1860 story, Michael F. Holt explores the sectional politics that permeated the election and foreshadowed the coming Civil War. He brings to light how the campaigns of the Republican Party and the National (Northern) Democrats and the Constitutional (Southern) Democrats and the newly formed Constitutional Union Party were not exclusively regional. His attention to the little-studied role of the Buchanan Administration, and of perceived threats to the preservation of the Union, clarifies the true dynamic of the 1860 presidential election, particularly in its early stages.
From former Republican Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a bold political playbook for America rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. It's getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called "the future of the GOP" by Politico, provides a clear-eyed path forward for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism--a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party's failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House's only Black Republican, representing a 71 percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd draws on his remarkable experience to present an inspiring guide for America. He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America's technological future. We all know we can do better. It's time to hit "ctrl alt del" and start the American Reboot.
Learn the hidden politics & history of presidential libraries, our taxpayer-funded American shrines - including the untold story of a president who broke the law to build his library on a tract of spectacular land: a primary training base for the United States Marines. The president took it anyway - during a time of war - and created a new bureaucracy to cover up his actions; only his other, larger crimes put an end to his scheme."The Last Campaign" examines what presidents do to keep us from knowing what presidents do: skewed history, self-commemoration, the influence of private money and political organizations, and a compromised government agency - the National Archives, which operates the libraries. Presidential library expert Anthony Clark recounts his attempts, as a private citizen and as a senior Congressional staffer, to rein in the system's worst abuses.Unrestrained commemoration, unregulated - and undisclosed - contributions, and unchecked partisan politics have radically altered the look and purpose of presidential libraries, changing them from impartial archives of history into extravagant, legacy-building showplaces where the goals of former presidents, their families, financial donors, and the national parties trump accuracy and the (often inconvenient) facts.Using records discovered over twelve years of research and repeated visits to all the presidential libraries, the National Archives, and other sources, Clark deftly narrates the ways presidents rewrite history. And how their private, political foundations use government institutions to raise millions of dollars for political purposes. He tells the story of the most political Archivist of the United States, and why his deplorable actions still resonate, still matter to us, more than twenty years later.Americans deserve fair and accurate history in the libraries for which we pay; history based on records, not politics. But while presidents run for posterity, dedicating their self-congratulatory museums an average of four years after leaving office (complete with exhibits created to glorify them and their achievements), the records that show what actually happened won't be opened for more than a hundred years...unless we decide to do something, and reform our presidential libraries.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the riveting story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself. Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered offers an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders. Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign's difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016.
