Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting [Hardcover]

Strother was one of the first modern political consultants: he started driving Louisiana candidates and eventually specialized in precisely crafted radio and TV ads. His memoir is filled with wild and woolly stories in which bordello-owning sheriffs and country music bands are a regular fixture on the campaign trail. It also delves into the highly successful period in the early 1980s when a run of victorious Democratic senatorial campaigns culminated in Strother joining Gary Hart's frenetic, and doomed, 1984 presidential run. (There's also a suggestion that he might have prevented the Donna Rice incident.) He gave James Carville one of his first political jobs and crossed paths several times with Dick Morris, whose significance as a consultant he admits despite his conviction that the man represents "everything that has gone wrong with American politics." Bill Clinton also comes under fire; Strother accuses him of "adding my body to those he climbed over to reach the White House" by using his services for several Arkansas campaigns, then dumping him for flashier competitors. The accusation is typical of the book's unblinkered view; after publishing a thinly disguised roman … clef, Cottonwood, in the 1990s, Strother holds nothing back this time. He gives full vent to his anger over prejudice against his Southern background, his disgust with the corruption of Louisiana politics and his "Darwinist, ferocious" approach to his profession. Although Strother's political prestige would be enough to guarantee his memoir's importance, his unflinching recollections raise the book to a even higher level of significance.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Strother, a self-described redneck and political hack, has an interesting tale to tell, which he does in a hail-fellow-well-met tone probably acquired on the campaign trail. His first political bruisings came in notoriously corrupt Louisiana, where he hung out his shingle as a political consultant in the 1960s, before anyone really knew what that meant. Strother winged it, advising both unknowns and A-list candidates, including Gary Hart and Bill Clinton. He is such a raconteur that even the travails of the lesser lights make fascinating reading, but it is when he trots out the big guns--for example, the story about the time Bill Clinton beat up Dick Morris--that readers will sit up and take notice. The last few chapters offer a world-weary assessment of what has gone wrong with political campaigns. This consultant says the blame falls in part on . . . well, consultants, but that mostly it is the candidates (both Clinton and Bush take criticism) who are at fault for placing winning above principle. Somehow he proves it was not always thus. Ilene Cooper
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