The Little Book of Campaign Etiquette: For Everyone with a Stake in Politicians and Journalists

by Stephen Hess, Judith Martin (Introduction)

In this shrewd and amusing series of observations, Stephen Hess provides a political etiquette for campaign behavior on the part of both politicians and journalists. Organized alphabetically under such headings as Advertising, Bias, Cyberpolitics, Disclosure, Families, Lying, Money, Sex Scandals, and Talk Radio, forty-three brief essays examine common practices and places where the system breaks down, then recommend preventive or reparative action through a few clear rules. With its broad coverage of campaign-related topics and its sensible suggestions, this book provides a useful corrective for practices that are dishonest, downright illegal, or sometimes just endlessly irksome. The book features illustrations by some of America's foremost political cartoonists, including Pulitzer Prize winners Herblock, Paul Conrad, Jeff MacNelly, Don Wright, Garry Trudeau, Jim Borgman, Mike Peters, Tom Toles, Mike Luckovich, Steve Benson, and Walt Handelsman.

159 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Will Atkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very quick read, but wasn’t much of an etiquette book. It just listed random topics that the author wanted to pontificate about. Even in a “chapter” about sex scandals, there was no etiquette (like, don’t do it). It was also written in 1996 and is woefully out of date at this point. Examples include Bush Sr campaigning with a microwave in his bus (portable microwaves!), people hiding behind their answering machines (cell phones weren’t a thing), and the unknown thing called the World Wide Web.