Playing with Fire
Penguin Press, November 2017. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good / Very Good. Item #236391
ISBN: 0399563148
From 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!
First/first in dustjacket. Blue faux cloth paper covered spine with silver lettering & black paper covered boards with LO blind stamped front panel. Clean, sound, with tight binding. Carefully read. Excellent account the 1968 election by Lawrence O'Donnell television writer for The West Wing & Mister Sterling, televsion anchor & pundit and one time congressional aid for Daniel Patrick Moynihan. O'Donnell is one of the smartest old white guys currently operating. O'Donnell is in the tradition of Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn and other smart, sharp tongued, political/intellectual heroes of mine. He can currently be seen and heard as a cable news talking head on his week nightly MSNBC show The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. He proudly calls himself a socialist in a twisted version of America were doing such a thing has become tantamount to treason. Once in the supposedly backward first half of the 20th century being a socialist was considered a perfectly normal political choice. It was about as controversial as those who call themselves indepedent today. Thankfully Bernie Sanders and other such lights in the darkness of American stupidity have helped reverse this insanity. Playing with Fire is O'Donnell 2nd book, and it is a darned good one. Recommended if you are a socialist or if you are something else.
Used Book
Price: $15.00
