Alpha Dogs or Squandering of America

Alpha Dogs: How Political Spin Became a Global Business

Author: James Harding

Alpha Dogs is the story of the men from an enormously influential campaign business called Sawyer Miller who served as backroom strategists on every presidential contest from Richard Nixon’s to George W. Bush’s. David Sawyer was a New England aristocrat with dreams of a career as a filmmaker; Scott Miller, the son of an Ohio shoe salesman, had a knack for copywriting. Unlikely partners, they became a political powerhouse, directing democratic revolutions from the Philippines to Chile, steering a dozen presidents and prime ministers into office, and instilling the campaign ethic in corporate giants from Coca-Cola to Apple. Long after the firm had broken up and sold out, its alumni had moved into the White House, to dozens of foreign countries, and into the offices of America’s blue-chip chief executives. The men of Sawyer Miller were the Manhattan Project of spin politics: a small but extraordinary group who invented an American-style political campaigning and exported it around the world.  In this lively and engaging narrative, James Harding tells the story of a few men whose political savvy, entrepreneurial drive, and sheer greed would alter the landscape of global politics. It is a story full of office intrigue, fierce rivalries, and disastrous miscalculations. And it is the tale of how world politics became American, and how American business became political.

Publishers Weekly

The rise and fall of the Sawyer Miller Group, a political consultancy firm, makes for a whirlwind look at international electioneering in this thoroughly engrossing book. The firm grew out of a partnership among the political neophytes who essentially invented the "American-style of campaigning" and served as backroom strategists in every presidential contest from Nixon to George W. Bush. Editor at TheTimesin London, Harding draws on over 200 interviews to reconstruct the behind-the-scenes history of the Sawyer Miller Group's meteoric rise to power and influence, offering an intimate look at the firm's involvement in global politics-its hand in steering Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines, its clients' successful campaigns in South America and its machinations in Chile and Israel. The author closes the main part of his narrative in the early 1990s, with the firm's crushing defeat in Peru, a company shift toward corporate clients (e.g., Coca-Cola) and an acrimonious buyout. Though Harding spends little time on domestic politics or his protagonists' personal lives, this fascinating book vividly renders political history with clear insight and rich detail. (May)

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Donna L. Davey, Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

This is a fast-paced recounting of the international wheeling and dealing of the Sawyer Miller Group, political consultants across three decades of presidential elections and other major campaigns, both of foreign leaders (e.g., Shimon Peres) and corporate giants. Harding (London Times) calls the globalization of the industry of politics Sawyer Miller's lasting legacy. Lively anecdotes and colorful detail make for a gripping story. Recommended for public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

An engaging account of the Sawyer Miller Group, a political-consulting firm that changed the way campaigns are run around the world. London Times business and city editor Harding, previously the Financial Times' Washington bureau chief, delivers with considerable aplomb a story that is frequently less than edifying. He begins in the heady days of the 1980s, when democracy movements were sprouting up around the world, television was just beginning to recognize its potential as a political force and a new president named Ronald Reagan was just beginning to harness its power. Onto this scene came filmmaker David Sawyer and ad man Scott Miller, who helped transform elections from occasions for the engagement of the citizenry into little more than consumer choices. The loop easily doubled back on itself, as the firm soon used techniques picked up in the political world to market New Coke and Apple Computers. Harding is ambivalent about this melding of purposes, recognizing how it debases civic discourse but also aware that to turn our backs on such techniques as focus groups, polling and micro-targeting voters' preferences would be unlikely at best and Luddite at worst. After a series of stateside victories, Sawyer Miller imported the techniques of American politicking to Chile, the Philippines, Israel and elsewhere, though not always successfully. They too ultimately become disillusioned with the monster of political spin they had created. When Harding delves into what makes some campaigns work and others fail, his text provides a revealing analysis of mass psychology within a democracy. More about that, and less about the inner politics in Sawyer Miller's Manhattan office, would haveimproved the book. No page-turner, but a solid read about a vitally important and often overlooked aspect of political life.

Interesting book: Compliance and Conviction or Modern Latin American Revolutions

Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity

Author: Robert Kuttner

A passionate, articulate argument detailing how the United States political system has failed to adapt to the economic challenges of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The American economy is in peril. It has fallen hostage to a casino of financial speculation, creating instability as well as inequality. Tens of millions of workers are vulnerable to layoffs and outsourcing, health care and retirement burdens are increasingly being shifted from employers to individuals. Here Kuttner debunks alarmist claims about supposed economic hazards and exposes the genuine dangers: hedge funds and private equity run amok, sub-prime lenders, Wall Street middlemen, and America's dependence on foreign central banks. He then outlines a persuasive, bold alternative, a new model of managed capitalism that can deliver security and opportunity, and rekindle democracy as we know it.