Author : Kenneth Holden
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0762794348
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (627 download)
Book Synopsis Making of the Great Communicator by : Kenneth Holden
Download or read book Making of the Great Communicator written by Kenneth Holden and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One week after Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for governor of California, the San Francisco Chronicle gibed: “It was simply a flagrant example of miscasting.” Reagan was tanking, and his businessmen backers panicked. Their bold experiment was about to fail. Then a think-tank friend suggested the expertise of two UCLA social pyschologists. Kenneth Holden and Stanley Plog agreed to take the job only if they could have three full days alone with Reagan. The candidate and his backers agreed, and the three men disappeared into a Malibu beach house. Those three days remade the bumbling neophyte into an articulate, confident politician whose devastating sound bites shredded the opposition. Holden or Plog remained by Reagan’s side for the rest of the campaign, feeding him information about California’s problems, teaching him to handle the press, writing his position papers, and helping develop the programs he offered, all while battling factions of the campaign team who seemed determine to sabotage their own man. Not everyone who voted for Reagan supported his positions, but voters preferred his honesty and forthrightness to the waffling of other politicians. Reagan won by a landslide. Holden and Plog had shaped an actor into a governor, but they were also turning a governor into a president. Here is the untold story of how they did it.