The Permanent Campaign: Inside the World of Elite Political Operatives

by Sidney Blumenthal

Book Overview

Explained how the breakdown in political parties forced politicians to govern in different ways. Instead of relying on patronage and party machines, politicians increasingly used political consultants... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807032085
• ISBN13: 9780807032084
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Everything old is new again...

This nifty little book (published nearly twenty years ago) serves as a sobering reminder that much of what is deplored in this fin de siecle political landscape has been entrenched within it for quite some time. The author is quick to disprove the notion that political consultants are rootless, ideologically uncommitted mercenaries working at the behest of the establishment. They are, for good or ill, their own sort of establishment and tend to profess to certain political leanings. Certainly, the phenomenon of Dick Morris is nothing new... Sure, Sidney Blumenthal isn't one of the world's great prose stylists, and insultingly obvious literary allusions abound (if I couldn't identify Samuel Beckett, I probably wouldn't be reading your book either, sir), but he writes well enough and gives the reader a good sense of the terrain. One more quibble, however: sure, the author was educated and spent well over a decade living and working in Boston (cradle of liberty my--), but why won't he fess up to having grown up in the Windy City and working, in some small part, for the Democratic machine he describes in such somber detail? Between Beantown and Chicago, I'd pick the latter any day of the week. The Permanent Campaign, published by the Unitarian Universalist Press...the bald eagle..the banner, exhorting the hapless citizen to vote his conscience...like the connections to Freudian psychology, it's almost too much altogether. But, then again, maybe it isn't. That first chapter, opening in the parlor of the home of Edward Bernays, the father of modern American advertising, (and Siggy's nephew, no less) is just fascinating. Oh yes, there's a chapter of Pat Caddell, the whiz kid pollster turned washed up screenwriter turned Warren Beatty cheerleader on the cable news chat shows. The author, on his very best behavior as a journalist, exposes Caddell for the genuine flake he is without the usual invective and ideological zealotry many of his detractors have come to expect. The best chapter by far is that on left-leaning consultant Don Rose, who orchestrated the fall of Richard Daley's corrupt and unloveable heir. But don't misunderstand, this is not a work that dwells on the personal for very long. It would be tedious to explain the politics of the book in detail, as twenty years have served quite well to that very effect. (So there.) For the record, I'm no fan of the New Republic or the Boston Red Sox or the current, odious administration upon which the author has for some time wasted his meticulous labours. But this book certainly deserves to be back in print, for the benefit of all those whose memory spans as far back as two weeks ago and for whom every sad reality of American politics is a new and unforeseen development. Over time, the names and faces have changed (Jane Byrne was but a blip across the screen, wasn't she?) but the story remains the same. [Four stars]