My previous blog was about the promotional aspects of John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic convention. My son Andy read it and reminded me about the Joe McGinniss book with the title of this blog and the quixotic circumstances of its publication.
Just prior to the 1968 political conventions, McGinniss got an idea to write a book about the advertising aspects of the presidential campaigns, which at that time was a fairly new concept. McGinniss pitched the idea to a publisher that told him to go ahead with it.
Andy remembered that McGinniss, a Democrat and a fan of Hubert Humphrey, contacted the Humphrey campaign and was turned down flat. He then called the Nixon advertising agency and they gave him an OK as long as he agreed to not publish anything before the election. This was a no brainer since he was going to shadow the advertising people and wouldn’t even start writing it until after election day.
Nixon won and the book became a best seller and it is still selling as a classic in how to market a presidential candidate. McGinniss wrote in his introduction that if Humphrey won, his book would likely have only been of interest to graduate students.
What I found interesting was that the Humphrey Democrats were known to be friendly to reporters while the Nixon people were not. I have memories of Nixon’s press conference after he lost the California Governor’s race in 1962. This attitude is, even so, today with President Trump continuously bashing the press. And yet, the Nixon people gave access McGinniss while Humphrey’s did not.
Pretty interesting! Politics are strange.
I am now rereading the book – still enlightening.
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