Review by Choice Review
This is the insider's view of the 2000 election. Jamieson and Waldman have put together a transcript of a conference of Democratic and Republican pollsters, media people, and strategists who helped to direct this presidential election. The book contains a number of interesting insights. In particular, the presentation of polling data is useful because campaign consultants approach elections from a fundamentally different perspective than academic authors. The book, however, is fundamentally flawed. The difficulty is that because it is a transcript of a conference, it is disorganized, repetitive, and undocumented. Scholars looking for the public explanations of campaign strategies and political junkies trying to identify the positions of campaign consultants will find it interesting, but it assumes too much in the way of political knowledge to be useful to undergraduates. In fact, a number of more comprehensive books about the 2000 election, among them The Elections of 2000, ed. by Michael Nelson (CH, Oct'01), and The Election of 2000: Reports and Interpretations, ed. by Gerald Pomper, are already in print. A. D. McNitt Eastern Illinois University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
