Product Description

McGinniss examines the repackaging of Richard Nixon by the men--Roger Ailes, now working on the George Bush campaign, and Frank Shakespeare--who first suggested that issues bore voters and that image is what counts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #335478 in Books
• Published on: 1988-08-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140112405
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

A Classic Beginning to Show Its Age
This is the book that catapulted Joe McGinniss to nearly icon-status at the age of 25 in 1969. At the time, it was a shockingly revealing book at how presidential candidate Richard Nixon was being sold - gasp - like a product. The original book jacket featured Nixon's face on a pack of cigarettes, as if the notion of Madison Avenue ad-men playing a pivotal role in a presidential campaign was dirty.

The book became such a classic that it remains assigned reading in many government classes to this day. But it is no longer shocking. Today, the practices described actually seem backward. Rather than a jarring warning about how campaigns are trading issue discussions for staged events, it today might be read as an out-of-date how to book. The discerning reader should not make this mistake. Instead, try to feel the original sentiment, the innocent expectations the book assumes of the reader.

There are two interesting aspects of this book that are ancillary to the main point. The one is the appearance of political figures, like Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes, who would go on to other things and remain well known today. The most interesting such example is none other than George Bush (the dad), who is profiled as a mere Congressional candidate, epitomizing the "modern" type of candidate who is "an extremely likable person" but is hazy on the issues. Bush's successful campaign featured "no issues" not even when his opponent asked Bush "if he would favor negotiations...to end the Vietnamese war" (see pages 44-45). The point was that Bush, who wasn't especially well-known, was a vapid product rather than a substantive candidate (some things change, some stay the same).

The other interesting thing is what happened to McGinniss. You won't read this in the book, but after it was published, McGinniss became a star at a very young age for a while. After the lecture tour, he didn't know what to do as a follow-up, so he started writing a book which eventually was published as "Heroes." After skewering Nixon, presumably the arch-typical villain of McGinniss's political worldview, he wanted to find somebody who inspired him. Predictably, he didn't. But "Heroes" is as much a self-revelatory story about the author's self-disappointment as it actually is about the political subjects of the book. He ends by speculating that only Ted Kennedy came close to heroic status, and that Kennedy would be the subject of his next book. He wasn't. Instead, McGinnis started writing true crime books, many of which were successful. Finally, in 1993 McGinnis came out with "The Last Brother" about Kennedy's fall from hero-status. The book ends in 1969, the year of Chappaquiddick, but also the year "The Selling of the President" was published. As a book about Ted Kennedy, whose career is more interesting after 1969, "The Last Brother" falls far short. As a metaphor about a young man whose career peaked too early (McGinnis), the book is fascinating.

"The Selling of the President" is McGinnis' best, most meaningful book. It stands on its own, and, despite showing considerable signs of age, still stands the test of time. For more updated information on presidential propaganda, read "Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine" by Howard Kurtz, or the excellent "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency," which itself deserves to be considered a classic. Interestingly, these books discuss presidencies that take what McGinnis is describing, the selling of the presidency, beyond the campaign trail and directly into the White House. Today the "permanent campaign" does not stop selling.

McGinnis' Trailblazing Look at TV Age Image Crafting.
This book is fun and breezy, and is a great companion piece to all those grinding "Making of the President 19--" books. McGinnis shows us the repackaging and rebranding of Richard Nixon into "The New Nixon." The original cover shows Nixon's face on a pack of cigarettes, because the campaign is all about the wholesale mass marketing of a product -- "New" and improved. The sales job is done largely with the help of Roger Ailes, then producer of The Mike Douglas Show. TV ads are shot with endless takes while Nixon stands before an audience and answers planted questions. When Nixon growls or mumbles to himself or snaps "Goddammit!" Ailes yells cut and they try again. Nixon and his production team had learned a big lesson from the five o'clock shadow, shifty eyed debates of 1960. Listen to your handlers, wear the darn makeup, look sincere and stick to the script. This book is a great, funny, fast look at the infancy of TV era politics. It's a nice history lesson, and it will add a fresh perspective to your stock of political knowledge. Today our image consultants are like Star Wars to Nixon's Apollo 7. Still, The Selling of The President stands as the best book on the creation of The Political Image.

Marketing the Presidency
Roger Ailes started out as a whiz kid producer in his twenties who was given the responsibility of producing a highly rated, popular, syndicated network television program, "The Mike Douglas Show." From there he moved on to politics, using the same kind of marketing routines that Madison Avenue gurus employ in the cases of super market commodities. Joe McGinniss managed to sneak aboard the Nixon for President campaign without having his main purpose discovered, that of writing up what he observed. Had Ailes or any of his underlings known, McGinniss would assuredly have been instantly dismissed. Had candidate Nixon ever learned the response would, almost assuredly, have been apoplectic, given Nixon's all-consuming hatred for reporters of anything but a fawning bent.

The book is humorous in many respects, while the overall result of the effort reported, selling a candidate who would ultimately become the only U.S. president to resign in disgrace, is anything but funny. "The Selling of the President" gives us an indication of how far we have plummeted in presidential campaigns where spin control dominates over critical substance. For instance, just twenty years after Nixon's 1968 victory over Hubert Humphrey, George Bush was elected by exploiting the American flag and a Massachusetts rapist named Willie Horton. The 1984 campaign of President Ronald Reagan stressed the theme of "Morning in America" despite prolific evidence that the temporary prosperity proudly exploited resulted from a credit card spending effect linked to an irresponsible tax cut which ultimately left America in serious debt.

The ultimate value of McGinniss' book is learning just how cynically Ailes and the spin control brigade seeks to manipulate American voters. To readers of George Orwell the pattern will contain a distinctly familiar ring.

William Hare