Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: 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a jarring warning about how campaigns are trading issue discussions for staged events, it today might be read as an out-of-date how to book.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.
| 
