Brutal Campaign
How the 1988 Election Set the Stage for Twenty-First-Century American Politics
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Douyard
About this listen
At 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time on election night 1988, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw informed the country that they would soon know more about the outcome of "one of the longest, bloodiest presidential campaigns that anyone can remember." It was a landslide victory for George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, and yet Bush would serve only one term. The 1988 presidential race quickly receded into history, but it was marked by the beginning of the modern political sex scandals, the first major African American presidential candidacy, the growing power of the religious right, and other key trends that came to define the elections that followed. Bush's campaign tactics clearly illustrated the strategies and issues that allowed Republicans to control the White House for most of the 1970s and 1980s, and the election set the stage for the national political advent of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Robert L. Fleegler's narrative history of the 1988 election draws from untapped archival sources and revealing oral history interviews to uncover just how consequential this moment was for American politics. Identifying the seeds of political issues to come, Fleegler delivers an engaging review of an election that set a template for the political dynamics that define our lives to this day.
©2023 Robert Fleegler (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Pivotal Tuesdays looks back at four pivotal presidential elections of the past 100 years to show how they shaped the 20th century. During the rowdy, four-way race in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs, and Woodrow Wilson, the candidates grappled with the tremendous changes of industrial capitalism and how best to respond to them. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's promises to give Americans a "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression helped him beat the beleaguered incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
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Important book...especially this year.
- By Jim on 07-31-16
By: Margaret O'Mara
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Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
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Narrator bungles pronunciations
- By ARV on 09-23-23
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The Red and the Blue
- The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism
- By: Steve Kornacki
- Narrated by: Steve Kornacki, Ron Butler
- Length: 17 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him speaker.
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Simply marvelous
- By Hector Gonzalez on 10-04-18
By: Steve Kornacki
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Rule and Ruin
- The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
- By: Geoffrey Kabaservice
- Narrated by: Michael Bulter Murray
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all.
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Kabaservice doesn't make the case
- By MJE on 01-22-16
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The Hardest Job in the World
- The American Presidency
- By: John Dickerson
- Narrated by: John Dickerson
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The American presidency is in trouble. It has become overburdened, misunderstood, almost impossible to do. “The problems in the job unfolded before Donald Trump was elected, and the challenges of governing today will confront his successors”, writes John Dickerson. After all, the founders never intended for our system of checks and balances to have one superior Chief Magistrate, with Congress demoted to “the little brother who can’t keep up”.
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Couldn’t wait for this book!
- By David H. Lawrence XVII on 06-17-20
By: John Dickerson
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Collision 2012
- Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America
- By: Dan Balz
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Four years ago, a bright young presidential candidate named Barack Obama campaigned on a theme of hope and change, and made history. Today, he finds himself in another bitter, divisive presidential race but without the buzzwords. Instead, an embattled president struggles with a dysfunctionally divided Congress, a controversial healthcare bill, a decade-long war, and a stagnant economy.
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Fascinating. Couldn't stop listening.
- By Gregory E Benoit on 07-24-16
By: Dan Balz
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It Was All a Lie
- How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else.
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A party gone astray
- By Devin on 08-07-20
By: Stuart Stevens
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The Center Holds
- Obama and His Enemies
- By: Jonathan Alter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Alter
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, Jonathan Alter uses his unmatched access and deep knowledge of politics and history to produce the first full account of America at the crossroads. He pierces the bubble of the White House and of the presidential campaigns with exclusive reporting and rare historical insight. More than a campaign book, this is the epic story of an embattled president facing a historic moment he considered more pivotal than 2008.
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The Best Telling of the 2012 Campaign So Far
- By Mike on 06-11-13
By: Jonathan Alter
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Donald J. Trump
- A President like No Other
- By: Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson - foreword
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Conrad Black, bestselling author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, turns his attention to his "friend" President Donald J. Trump and provides the most intriguing and significant analysis yet of Trump's political rise. Ambitious in intellectual scope, contrarian in many of its opinions, and admirably concise, this is surely set to be one of the most provocative political books you are likely to listen to this year.
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45th President of the United States of America
- By JEYCEE on 05-16-18
By: Conrad Black, and others
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Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
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Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
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The Man Who Sold America
- Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story
- By: Joy-Ann Reid
- Narrated by: Joy-Ann Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a "for sale" sign - on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid's essential new audiobook, The Man Who Sold America, delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators.
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Good explanation of how we got to where we are
- By Caduceus26 on 07-13-19
By: Joy-Ann Reid