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Overview
Americans equate Washington with politics. But the underpinnings of government remain intangible - complicated and tangled networks fleetingly exposed during election years. Few understand the intricate relationships that keep the machinery on Capitol Hill constantly churning, constantly changing. Behind each public figure is a deep and far-reaching infrastructure driven by calculated career moves and alliances with carefully chosen and cultivated colleagues. In War Without Bloodshed, journalists Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis uncover the interlocking relationships on Capitol Hill far beyond the job descriptions taught in government and history classes. Each chapter is a slice of the capital's political culture as the authors unveil the tantalizing interplay between Washington posts and personalities. First they note the key positions: the pollster, the lobbyist, the committee chairman, opposition leader, the member of Congress, the chief of staff. They then spotlight exemplary representatives of each job: Stanley Greenberg, the president's pollster, who dreamed of a new Democratic majority, and Frank Luntz, whose polling helped shape the Republican Contract With America; Michael Bromberg, the lobbyist known as Mr. Health Care, who took on Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Paul Equale, the insurance lobbyist, who achieved success at the expense of his youthful idealism; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the philosopher-politician, who bedeviled the White House; Newt Gingrich, who led his party to power for the first time in forty years; Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from South Central Los Angeles, who refused to be marginalized by a white male power structure - Democratic or Republican; and Sheila Burke, the unassuming staffer who agitated the G. O. P.'s right wing by wielding power in the name of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. In War Without Bloodshed, Clift and Brazaitis reveal that every decision is political on Capitol Hill - from the title of a memorandum to the luSynopsis
Americans equate Washington with politics. But the underpinnings of government remain intangible - complicated and tangled networks fleetingly exposed during election years. Few understand the intricate relationships that keep the machinery on Capitol Hill constantly churning, constantly changing. Behind each public figure is a deep and far-reaching infrastructure driven by calculated career moves and alliances with carefully chosen and cultivated colleagues. In War Without Bloodshed, journalists Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis uncover the interlocking relationships on Capitol Hill far beyond the job descriptions taught in government and history classes. Each chapter is a slice of the capital's political culture as the authors unveil the tantalizing interplay between Washington posts and personalities. First they note the key positions: the pollster, the lobbyist, the committee chairman, opposition leader, the member of Congress, the chief of staff. They then spotlight exemplary representatives of each job: Stanley Greenberg, the president's pollster, who dreamed of a new Democratic majority, and Frank Luntz, whose polling helped shape the Republican Contract With America; Michael Bromberg, the lobbyist known as Mr. Health Care, who took on Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Paul Equale, the insurance lobbyist, who achieved success at the expense of his youthful idealism; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the philosopher-politician, who bedeviled the White House; Newt Gingrich, who led his party to power for the first time in forty years; Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from South Central Los Angeles, who refused to be marginalized by a white male power structure - Democratic or Republican; and Sheila Burke, the unassuming staffer who agitated the G. O. P.'s right wing by wielding power in the name of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. In War Without Bloodshed, Clift and Brazaitis reveal that every decision is political on Capitol Hill - from the title of a memorandum to the lu
Publishers Weekly
The authors are Washington insiders: Clift, contributing editor to Newsweek and a McLaughlin Group weekly TV panelist, and her husband, Brazaitis, Cleveland Plain Dealer Washington bureau chief. To illustrate how real power in Washington is wielded, they offer personal profiles, by turns trenchant and predictable, of eight powerful individuals. "[Newt] Gingrich could not escape his past. The ruthless way that he had achieved his position would forever color the way he was perceived," they write of the House Speaker. "A streak of anarchy runs through [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan's dark Irish soul. He wants to tear down everything he has built" is their take on the Democratic senator from New York and former Senate Finance Committee chairman. Clinton's defeated health-care plan shadows the profiles of hospital industry lobbyist Michael Bromberg and independent insurance agents' lobbyist Paul Equale, who helped defeat the plan, and presidential pollster Stanley Greenberg, who urged the embattled White House to give up on health care and overhaul welfare instead. Also profiled are pollster Frank Luntz, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and ex-Democrat Sheila Burke, now Senator Bob Dole's chief of staff. An appendix details political action committee contributions to candidates and predicts that, with these committees shifting most of their support to Republicans, the Democrats will be hard-pressed to regain a majority. Photos. Author tour. (June)