"Strother begins with his blue-collar Democratic upbringing in the oil-refining small town of Port Arthur, Texas, in the forties and fifties. He follows with the crash course in Louisiana politics and corruption he received following graduate school. His vivid evocation of larger-than-life characters such as Jimmie Davis and Russell Long prefigures politics as an arena for the cult of personality that later bloomed - for better and worse - with the pervasion of TV. Strother's mastery of the subtleties of political commercials counterpoints his compelling entry into the big-time senatorial and congressional races of the 1970s and early 1980s.". "The book reaches its dramatic climax in the story of Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign. Strother's gifts for incisive portraiture and media analysis crystallize an image of Hart as a brilliant, enigmatic, but ultimately self-destructive man and a democracy increasingly bedazzled by celebrity, blinded by breaches of privacy. The author's adventures with the Clintons, Al Gore, and Louisiana notables, as well as famous consultants such as Dick Morris, Matt Reese, and James Carville, both tantalize and instruct. In a final set of reflections, Strother provides a disquieting picture of the devolution of candidates and consultants and the ascension of money and polling."--BOOK JACKET.