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The Center Holds: Obama And His Enemies (2013)

by Jonathan Alter(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1451646070 (ISBN13: 9781451646078)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: A good account of the forces that shaped the 2012 Presidential election, as well as some of the highlights of the election itself. Much, much, heavier on what the Obama White House and campaign were doing than on the Republicans, with a clear positive bias towards the Democrats. As someone who works on campaigns, a lot of the things Alter touches upon (such as his great bit about how the Romney campaign viewed IEs) echoed experiences I've had or otherwise found very believable.Overall I really enjoyed reading this work, as I did Alter's previous work on Obama, "The Promise." Look forward to his next work on contemporary politics.
review 2: I am enjoying this book but I have to confess I have skipped over substantial chunks. The book is organized into relativel... morey short chapters which made it easier to skip the parts I'm not interested in. Don't need to read a whole bunch about the history of Fox News. Ditto Roger Ailes. I haven't gotten to the part about the 47% flap yet.OK now I'm done and can recommend it as a worthwhile read. As a big Obama supporter it was fun to read of the haplessness of the Romney campaign. The things I learned included how ineffective the big money super PAC ads were. They tended to reflect the biases of the funders rather than having a message that would get traction with voters. I also didn't realize how the Republican efforts to supress the votes actually wound up increasing black voter turn-out and may have tipped Florida and Ohio to the President.I also forgot about some of the silly things that happened toward the end of the campaign. While I don't consider schadenfreude to be a virtue, it was kind of fun to read how clueless the Romney team was about their prospects, right up to election night. As we all know, the election wasn't even close. less

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