Bobby Baker Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 (It 's not who you know it 's who you get to know)
The theme of this chapter is good politicians get to know a lot more politicians. The reason that that theme is so crucial in politics is because of the name of the chapter, it 's not just who you know, it 's who you get to know. Lyndon Johnson understood this crucial part of politics and took a very weird approach by taking 4 showers a day and brushing his teeth 5 times in a five minute interval. That is absolutely crazy unless you are a politician who is trying to meet 75 congressional secretaries. Lyndon Johnson also hired a soon to be shady politician named Bobby Baker who answered phones for the White House cloak room which is a break room for politicians. By making Bobby Baker

That somewhere is very key because it should be where you were based from. This is because you will never lose support from your base unless you lose touch with your base. When a politician becomes too distant from his base and gives the impression that he did more than is possible to do in Washington DC he can lose his base. He should give people the sense that he never left town in the first place. “You don 't tell people what to worry about; they tell you.” That is a key quote on how to not lose your home base because you will always need to listen to other people 's problems as opposed to them listening to their problems that they haven 't figured out were problems. A politician should dress like a common person because if they don 't then they will be thought as as not common and will be rejected by all of their voters. Harris Wofford took advantage of this idea when he created a commercial for pro universal health care which stated "if the criminal has a right to an attorney, the working family has a right to a doctor." He gave the people a sense that he knew them which made people feel special and empowered. The famous communist catcher McCarthy was known for using this strategy in order to talk to

Respond to attacks immediately and don 't let them get away with anything. Dukakis was accused of being a bleeding heart liberal and then went to an interview and said he wouldn 't push the death penalty on someone who raped and killed a girl. Since he didn 't respond to the attack, and then made if worse he had to pay the price. At the 1950 Senate Democratic debate in Florida a lot of dirty tricks were played. It was an infamous "Red Pepper" campaign in which the incumbent senator was painted as a dupe of Stalin and as an enemy of free enterprise. Absurd but sinister-sounding charges were pressed including "Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert!" "pepper has a sister who was once a thespian!" "Pepper practiced celibacy before his marriage!" That year 7 senators were defeated for reelection. Pepper failed to deflect the personal attack and lost because of it. There are a few methods to deflect attacks including: catch 'em in a lie so you ruin their credibility, ridicule them to make them seem silly, or use the force of the opponent 's own attack to bring him down. There are three corollaries to this rule. 1) Catch 'em in a lie Daniel Moynihan won an election by catching inconsistencies in his opponents ' stories. 2) Ridicule When FDR was accused of sending a military destroyer to find his dog Fala, he gave his famous "Fala" speech that made his