Playing with Fire : The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics
By Lawrence O'DonnellFrom the host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, an important and enthralling new account of the presidential election that changed everything, the race that created American politics as we know it today The 1968 U.S. Presidential election was the young Lawrence O'Donnell's political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America's shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself, but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different, and how we got to where we are now. Playing With Fire represents O'Donnell's master class in American electioneering, embedded in the epic human drama of a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time. Nothing went according to the script. LBJ was confident he'd dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson's greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren't prepared to challenge their own party's incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring to run against the president and the Vietnam War. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, LBJ dropped out, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage. Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth façade behind which he feverishly held his party's right and left wings in the fold, through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace. But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason. The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today. Playing With Fire is the perfect holiday gift!
show more
Book details
- Hardcover
- 496 pages
- English
- 0399563148
- 9780399563140
About Lawrence O'Donnell
lawrence o'donnell was Read More about Lawrence O'Donnell
More Books By Lawrence O'Donnell
People who bought this also bought
Multilevel Adaptive Methods for Partial Differential Equations
Used Book
Get Over It!: Thought Therapy for Healing the Hard Stuff by Iyanla Vanzant
New Book
What They Teach You at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton
New Book
Close to the Bone : Life-Threatening Illness and the Search for Meaning
Used Book
American Firsts Innovations, Discoveries and Gadgets Born in the U.S.A.
Used Book
What Would Judy Say?: A Grown-Up Guide to Living Together with Benefits
Used Book
The Ultimate Ice Cream Book : Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More
Used Book