Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns
    Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns
    Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns
    Audiobook9 hours

    Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns

    Written by Joseph Cummins

    Narrated by Tom Perkins

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Today's political pundits express shock and disappointment when candidates resort to negative campaigning. But history reveals that smear campaigns are as American as apple pie. Anything for a Vote is an illustrated look at 200-plus years of dirty tricks and bad behavior in presidential elections, from George Washington to Barack Obama and John McCain. Let the name-calling begin!

    • 1836: Congressman Davy Crockett accuses candidate Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women's clothing: "He is laced up in corsets!"
    • 1960: Former president Harry Truman advises voters that "if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell!"

    Full of sleazy anecdotes from every presidential election in United States history, Anything for a Vote is a valuable reminder that history does repeat itself, that lessons can be learned from the past (though they usually aren't), and that our most famous presidents are not above reproach when it comes to the dirtiest game of all-political campaigning.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 27, 2015
    ISBN9781494585242
    Author

    Joseph Cummins

    Joseph Cummins is the author of numerous books, including Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Elections; A Bloody History of the World, which won the 2010 Our History Project Gold Medal Award; and the forthcoming Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter.

    Related to Anything for a Vote

    Related audiobooks

    Humor & Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Anything for a Vote

    4/5

    23 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      In this election year, it seemed fitting to read a book about presidential elections, especially dirty ones since 2016 is shaping up to be one of the ugliest in recent history. American politics has always been an ugly, eat your own kind of thing, especially presidential politics. Trump and his ilk are sadly only the most recent in a long line of loud-mouth, back-stabbing, mud-slinging presidential candidates.
    • 4/5
      After George Washington, Who Could You Trust?There are too many of them, spread over too many years, to remember the details. So Anything For A Vote is a welcome compendium of the vicious comedy that is presidential elections. It is terrific to read the human side of the candidates, the personalities behind the party rhetoric, their tics, foibles and predilections. You learn what they were trying to hide, how they undermined their opponents, and how voters perceived them in the context of their times. It makes them into real human beings. Names that have been forgotten, and some that deserve to be, pepper the campaigns. The backroom antics, the dirty tricks, outright lies and backstabbing are all there for your enjoyment.Sleaze predominates, and Cummins provides a Sleaze-O-Meter before many of the elections, to give an advance clue as to how bad it became. Seven of them hit ten, mostly in the modern era, since Kennedy-Nixon. The negative campaigns of our time are nothing new. The mudslinging started with, or rather against, Thomas Jefferson, who ironically could appeal to any political stripe: “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames, female chastity violated, your children writhing on the pike? Great God of compassion and justice, shield my country from destruction.”Jefferson won anyway.For over a century, it was unseemly to campaign. Candidates literally stayed home, talked to reporters, and held court, but pressing the flesh and haranguing the crowd was frowned upon. Warren Harding was the first to invite Hollywood onto his front porch, so he could be photographed with film stars. It made him seem part of the scene rather than just a politician, and elections have never been without them since.This is not the first version of Anything For A Vote. It’s an ongoing franchise, updatable every decade with new stories provided courtesy of the tweedledum-tweedledee of the political parties. It’s a refresher course, an eye-roller and a laughfest all in one.David Wineberg