Download or read book Almost President written by Scott Farris and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veteran political journalist Scott Farris tells the stories of legendary presidential also-rans, from Henry Clay to Stephen Douglas, from William Jennings Bryan to Thomas Dewey, and from Adlai Stevenson to Al Gore. He also includes concise profiles of every major candidate nominated for president who never reached the White House but who helped promote the success of American democracy. Farris explains how Barry Goldwater achieved the party realignment that had eluded FDR, how George McGovern paved the way for Barack Obama, and how Ross Perot changed the way all presidential candidates campaign. There is Al Smith, the first Catholic nominee for president; and Adlai Stevenson, the candidate of the "eggheads" who remains the beau ideal of a liberal statesman. And Farris explores the potential legacies of recent runners-up John Kerry and John McCain. The book also includes compact and evocative portraits of such men as John C. Fremont, the first Republican Party presidential candidate; and General Winfield Scott, whose loss helped guarantee the Union victory in the Civil War. This new edition of Almost President brings the work up-to-date with a section that explores the results and ramifications of the 2012 presidential election.

Download or read book What Happened written by Hillary Rodham Clinton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An engaging, beautifully synthesized page-turner” (Slate). The #1 New York Times bestseller and Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most personal memoir yet, about the 2016 presidential election. In this “candid and blackly funny” (The New York Times) memoir, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. She takes us inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. “At her most emotionally raw” (People), Hillary describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. She tells readers what it took to get back on her feet—the rituals, relationships, and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. In this “feminist manifesto” (The New York Times), she speaks to the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics. Offering a “bracing... guide to our political arena” (The Washington Post), What Happened lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary. By analyzing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future. The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign, now with a new epilogue showing how Hillary grappled with many of her worst fears coming true in the Trump Era, while finding new hope in a surge of civic activism, women running for office, and young people marching in the streets.

Download or read book Frankly We Did Win This Election written by Michael C. Bender and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Lost Soul of the American Presidency written by Stephen F. Knott and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American presidency is not what it once was. Nor, Stephen F. Knott contends, what it was meant to be. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump’s latest tweet and old as the American republic, the distinguished presidential scholar documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office envisioned by the framers of the Constitution into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day. The presidency of popular consent, or the majoritarian presidency that we have today, far predates its current incarnation. The executive office as James Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton conceived it would be a source of national pride and unity, a check on the tyranny of the majority, and a neutral guarantor of the nation’s laws. The Lost Soul of the American Presidency shows how Thomas Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800” remade the presidency, paving the way for Andrew Jackson to elevate “majority rule” into an unofficial constitutional principle—and contributing to the disenfranchisement, and worse, of African Americans and Native Americans. In Woodrow Wilson, Knott finds a worthy successor to Jefferson and Jackson. More than any of his predecessors, Wilson altered the nation’s expectations of what a president could be expected to achieve, putting in place the political machinery to support a “presidential government.” As difficult as it might be to recover the lost soul of the American presidency, Knott reminds us of presidents who resisted pandering to public opinion and appealed to our better angels—George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft, among others—whose presidencies suggest an alternative and offer hope for the future of the nation’s highest office.

Download or read book Redemption written by Nicholas Lemann and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away. Nicholas Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a gruesome killing spree. This was the start of an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant'ssupport for the emergent structures of black political power. The remorseless strategy of well-financed "White Line" organizations was to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875. Lemann bases his devastating account on a wealth of military records, congressional investigations, memoirs, press reports, and the invaluable papers of Adelbert Ames, the war hero from Maine who was Mississippi's governor at the time. When Ames pleaded with Grant for federal troops who could thwart the white terrorists violently disrupting Republican political activities, Grant wavered, and the result was a bloody, corrupt election in which Mississippi was "redeemed"—that is, returned to white control. Redemption makes clear that this is what led to the death of Reconstruction—and of the rights encoded in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We are still living with the consequences.

Download or read book Divided We Stand written by Roger Simon and published by Crown. This book was released on 2001 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just before Election Day 2000, Al Gore figured the presidential race was his to win or lose. In the end, he did both. How did this happen? Bestselling author Roger Simon provides the first complete look at America's most bizarre and most explosive presidential campaign -- not just the final thirty-six days, but the two-year, three-way battle between George W. Bush, Al Gore, and, yes, Bill Clinton, to see who would dominate American politics. Simon reveals how the two candidates struggled to contend with the long shadow cast by Bill Clinton and the endless psychodrama of his presidency. Both studied Clinton's precision use of politics and his beguiling employment of stagecraft, avoiding hot-button issues and trying to become, as Clinton had been, First Friend to the nation. However, while Al Gore viewed the presidential race as a job interview, George Bush viewed it as a date. Divided We Stand is a book that makes news. Simon provides never-before-revealed details of the rift between Clinton and Gore, including Gore's secret plans if he had replaced Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Simon also reveals how Clinton tried -- and failed -- to pick Gore's running mate in 2000 and offers new details of how Joe Lieberman snared the spot on the ticket. Simon further exposes new and shocking details about how the dirtiest politics of the 2000 race -- the deplorable smear campaign in South Carolina -- kicked off a campaign of open warfare between John McCain and George W. Bush. Readers will also learn: * How Ralph Nader affected the outcome of the race and how he feels today about his role. * How Al Gore lost his home state and why George Bush did sopoorly with African American voters, even after wooing them so hard. * How Republican Congressional staff members were so angry about union and black turnout for Al Gore and other Democrats that they held a secret meeting after the election to study ways of depressing black and labor voter turnout in the future. * Why the race was so close and what it means for the future of America. * Why, for better or worse, Bill Clinton continues to dominate our political landscape. Divided We Stand is the story not just of a campaign, but of a country. Simon's account will make you ask yourself what you might have done differently had you known what lurked in the corners you could not see. "Gore turns from the car and heads quickly down the passageway, a Secret Service agent preceding him. . . . 'Sir, ' David Morehouse, his trip director, says, trying to match him stride for stride, 'we need to go to hold.' "Gore gives him a look that could toast bread. 'I'm not going to hold, ' he says. He picks up his pace. Morehouse has been having trouble with a stiff knee and now he is hobbling after the vice president. 'Sir, we need to go to hold!' Morehouse says, praying the vice president does not ask him why. In point of fact, Morehouse does not know why. He just knows that moments ago his cell phone rang with a frantic call saying that the vice president should not, could not, must not go out to the plaza and concede defeat. "Over his shoulder, Gore now explains to Morehouse why there will be no delay. 'I just talked to the governor, ' Gore says. He already conceded to Bush in a telephone call a few minutes ago back at the hotel. . . . 'He's waiting on me, and I'm goingstraight to the stage, ' Gore says. "With Gore now almost at the bottom of the steps and Morehouse running out of any option he can think of, he limps quickly in front of Gore and blocks his way. Just blocks it. Just like that. Morehouse is six-foot-one and solidly built, and now he is blocking the path of the vice president of the United States. Gore is six-foot-two and a weightlifter, but if it is still possible to have something beneath your dignity after running for president for eighteen months, then wrestling one of your own aides to the ground is beneath his dignity. "Gore stops short and glares at Morehouse. Both of them can now hear the crowd noise from the plaza. The words tumble from Morehouse's lips. He isn't even sure what he is saying, but it goes, 'Sir, you need to get to the hold for five minutes. Daley has to talk to you. It's going to be fine; it's going to be fine.'" -- from Divided We Stand

Download or read book Let the People Pick the President written by Jesse Wegman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with..." —Publishers Weekly The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose? Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question—and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Now, as political passions reach a boiling point at the dawn of the 2020 race, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed—now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president? In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count—and restore belief in our democratic system.

Download or read book The Art of the Political Putdown written by Chris Lamb and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of the Political Putdown is a book of over 300 witty verbal jabs and ripostes from politicians around the world, all of whom share a common sharp tongue. Liberal or conservative, humor can be a powerful weapon in any politician's arsenal, and political journalists Chris Lamb and Will Moredock have seen their fair share of quips, witty remarks, and sarcastic pleasantries. In mining the past few thousand years of political history, they've unearthed a treasure trove of humorous exchanges, from ancient Rome to modern day, to compile this collection of hilarious comebacks and putdowns. • Features 11 brief essays analyzing the use of humor and wit in various political contexts • Even-handed, intelligent, and lighthearted political humor that gives readers from the Left and the Right something to laugh about • Contains 20 political cartoon-style illustrations The Art of the Political Putdown is filled with famous and lesser-known politicians at their sassiest, along with short essays and illustrations. This is a comprehensive, nonpartisan collection of witticisms, scathing burns, and mic-drop-worthy insults throughout history. • A rare political humor book with something for everyone, and a welcome reminder that politics can also be a source of laughter • Perfect as a gift for politics and history buffs and for anyone who appreciates smart humor and top-notch wit • Great for those who loved Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane by the Staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents by Pete Souza, and The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill by James C. Humes

Download or read book All the Truth Is Out written by Matt Bai and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major motion picture "The Front Runner" starring Hugh Jackman An NPR Best Book of the Year In May 1987, Colorado Senator Gary Hart—a dashing, reform-minded Democrat—seemed a lock for the party’s presidential nomination and led George H. W. Bush by double digits in the polls. Then, in one tumultuous week, rumors of marital infidelity and a newspaper’s stakeout of Hart’s home resulted in a media frenzy the likes of which had never been seen before. Through the spellbindingly reported story of the Senator’s fall from grace, Matt Bai, Yahoo News columnist and former chief political correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, shows the Hart affair to be far more than one man’s tragedy: rather, it marked a crucial turning point in the ethos of political media, and the new norms of life in the public eye. All the Truth Is Out is a tour de force portrait of the American way of politics at the highest level, one that changes our understanding of how we elect our presidents and how the bedrock of American values has shifted under our feet.

Download or read book A Man of Iron written by Troy Senik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A long-overdue biography of Grover Cleveland, the honest, principled, plain-spoken, and incorruptible twenty-second and twenty-fourth president whose country has largely forgotten him"--

Download or read book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College written by Alexander Keyssar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Forgotten Presidents written by Michael J. Gerhardt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Constitutional Legacy of Forgotten Presidents, eminent constitutional scholar Michael Gerhardt tells the stories of thirteen presidents whom most Americans do not remember and scholars think had no constitutional impact, among them Chester Arthur, Martin Van Buren, and William Howard Taft. As Gerhardt shows, our forgotten presidents played crucial roles in laying some of the groundwork followed by Lincoln and other modern presidents, as well as providing examples for future lawmakers of constitutional choices to avoid.

Download or read book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump written by Bandy X. Lee and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount. This new edition includes new essays bringing the book up to date—because this is still not normal. Originally released in fall 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a runaway bestseller. Alarmed Americans and international onlookers wanted to know: What is wrong with him? That question still plagues us. The Trump administration has proven as chaotic and destructive as its opponents feared, and the man at the center of it all remains a cipher. Constrained by the APA’s “Goldwater rule,” which inhibits mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures they have not personally examined, many of those qualified to weigh in on the issue have shied away from discussing it at all. The public has thus been left to wonder whether he is mad, bad, or both. The prestigious mental health experts who have contributed to the revised and updated version of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump argue that their moral and civic "duty to warn" supersedes professional neutrality. Whatever affects him, affects the nation: From the trauma people have experienced under the Trump administration to the cult-like characteristics of his followers, he has created unprecedented mental health consequences across our nation and beyond. With eight new essays (about one hundred pages of new material), this edition will cover the dangerous ramifications of Trump's unnatural state. It’s not all in our heads. It’s in his.

Download or read book The Last of the President s Men written by Bob Woodward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in his new book The Last of the President’s Men. Woodward reveals the untold story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system that changed history and led to Nixon’s resignation. In forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents, many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries, Woodward has uncovered new dimensions of Nixon’s secrets, obsessions and deceptions. The Last of the President’s Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016—what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values?

Download or read book Every Day Is Extra written by John Kerry and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant New York Times bestseller, John Kerry’s revealing memoir offers “a detailed record of an important life…frank, thoughtful, and clearly written…A bittersweet reminder of what the country once demanded of its leaders” (The New York Times Book Review). Every Day Is Extra is John Kerry’s candid personal story. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966, and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and he testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war. Kerry was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004 he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state—Ohio—of winning. He succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East; dealt with the Syrian civil war while combatting ISIS; and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. “In these pages Kerry shows remarkable honesty, depth, even spirituality…There is remarkable poignancy—not the usual currency of the career politician and the country’s top diplomat” (The Boston Globe). A witness to some of the most important events of our recent history, Kerry tells wonderful stories about colleagues Ted Kennedy and John McCain, as well as President Obama and other major figures. He writes movingly of recovering his faith while in the Senate, and how he deplores the hyper-partisanship that has infected Washington. Every Day Is Extra “draws back the curtain on a life you thought you knew, but turns out to be a bit different…A surprisingly personal book” (The Washington Post) that shows Kerry for the dedicated, witty, and authentic man that he is and provides forceful testimony for the importance of diplomacy and American leadership to address the increasingly complex challenges of a more globalized world.

Download or read book One Man Against the World written by Tim Weiner and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award–winning author of Legacy of Ashes delivers “a devastating account of Nixon’s presidency . . . powerful [and] extraordinary” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Drawing on newly declassified documents, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and congress, but the American population at large. In riveting prose, Tim Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon’s demise were inextricably linked. From the hail of garbage and curses that awaited Nixon upon his arrival at the White House, to the unprecedented action Nixon took against American citizens, to the infamous break-in and the tapes that bear remarkable record of the most intimate and damning conversations between the president and his confidantes, Weiner narrates the history of Nixon’s anguished presidency in fascinating and fresh detail. A crucial new look at the greatest political suicide in history, One Man Against the World leaves us not only with new insight into this tumultuous period, but also into the motivations and demons of an American president who saw enemies everywhere, and, thinking the world was against him, undermined the foundations of the country he had hoped to lead.

Download or read book Campaign of the Century written by Irwin F. Gellman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on massive new research, a compelling and surprising account of the twentieth century's closest election The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is one of the most frequently described political events of the twentieth century, yet the accounts to date have been remarkably unbalanced. Far more attention is given to Kennedy's side than to Nixon's. The imbalance began with the first book on that election, Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960—in which (as he later admitted) White deliberately cast Kennedy as the hero and Nixon as the villain—and it has been perpetuated in almost every book since then. Few historians have attempted an unbiased account of the election, and none have done the archival research that Irwin F. Gellman has done. Based on previously unused sources such as the FBI's surveillance of JFK and the papers of Leon Jaworski, vice-presidential candidate Henry Cabot Lodge, and many others, this book presents the first even-handed history of both the primary campaigns and the general election. The result is a fresh, engaging chronicle that shatters long†‘held myths and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates.