Run the Other Way
Fixing the Two-Party System, One Campaign at a Time
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Bill Hillsman is simply, in the words of Slate.com, "the world's greatest political adman." With his groundbreaking consulting work on Paul Wellstone's senatorial, Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial, and Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns, he was the first to publicly challenge the conventional strategies of political campaigns, the inefficiency of campaign spending, the desultory, banal, and insulting political ads. As Hillsman says, "I don't believe you can annoy someone into voting for your candidate."
Hillsman first rocked the political establishment during Wellstone's 1990 Senate bid, with witty, sharp political ads that had audiences glued to their television sets and talking about the commercials for weeks afterward. In the end, he helped Wellstone overcome a $7 million campaign spending disadvantage to win the election. And the risk taking continued when he ran Jesse Ventura's Reform Party gubernatorial and Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential campaigns. In one Nader ad, a child looks out at the viewer and says, "When I grow up, I want politicians to ignore me." In an ad from Ventura's campaign, a boy playing with a Jesse Ventura action figure ("New, from the Reform Party!") takes on Ventura's voice to growl, "I don't want your stupid money!" With bold and brilliant ads like these, Hillsman helped two underdog candidates become senator and governor, transformed Minnesota politics, and showed the country that it has viable and appealing options outside of the two major parties.
Run the Other Way offers fascinating and disturbing insights into the shadowy, cronyistic world of political consulting: the grossly overpaid consultants, incompetent and inaccurate pollsters, fundraisers who take a dollar for every dollar they raise, and strategists who use negative advertising to intentionally keep people from voting. But it also gives us a from-the-trenches look at how Americans can turn the weapons trained on us back against the master propagandists, and in so doing revitalize our badly damaged democracy. Fleshing out his case with real-life stories from his involvement in numerous campaigns, Hillsman takes us behind the electioneering scenes of old Washington hands and trouble-making independents, including Ross Perot, Warren Beatty, John McCain, Arianna Huffington, and Colin Powell.
An outsider with an insider's vantage point, Hillsman sees America at a crucial historical moment defined by the continuing decline of both major political parties and the rise of independent voters. Edgy, controversial, and often humorous, his political ads have energized voters and revolutionized election campaigning over the last fifteen years. This is a book for everyone who's ever run for office, thought about running for office, or voted for someone running for office. Run the Other Way investigates the many imperfections in the greatest system of government in the world and challenges all of us to make it better.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Regardless of November tallies, the real winner of this year's presidential race will be"Election Industry, Inc.," says Hillman--voters and qualified candidates will lose out. While political reporters, pundits and professors often prescribe treatments for ailing democratic processes during an election year, Hillsman, a seasoned political marketer for such candidates as the late Paul Wellstone, Jesse Ventura and Ralph Nader, brings a unique and righteously outraged perspective to the mix. In this volume--part memoir, part campaign handbook--he attacks the den of Washington, D.C.-based political consultants and party officials ("an inside-the-Beltway collective of toadies, fakes, crooks, character assassins, racketeers, party apologists, false scientists, phony experts, self-aggrandizers, backscratchers, and backstabbers") and recalls his own strategies for promoting candidates and enfranchising voters. Third party challengers (or even outsider party members like Howard Dean and John McCain), Hillsman says, face incredible obstacles from the Republican and Democratic elite: an onslaught of"toxic" political advertisements, character assassinations and sound-bite responses to real issues. Sometimes Hillsman's forceful prose, embellished with sardonic zingers, turns from entertaining to repetitive. For instance, after citing a poll of political professionals that revealed 37 percent of them thought it acceptable to use negative advertising to hold down voter turnout and focus on insult rather than on issues, he adds the coda:"Political consultants think that's smart. I think it's despicable." Ten pages later, he cites the same poll and repeats the coda almost word for word. Flaws aside, though, anyone who shares Hillsman's ire at the current state of electoral politics will enjoy this maverick tract and its wicked upbraiding of establishment campaigning.
