The “If you’re not first, you’re last” campaign.

Ricky Bobby candidly remembered the words of wisdom his father gave to him. “If you’re not first, you’re last,” his father inspired. These words drove Ricky Bobby to his many winning streaks. If you haven’t seen the hilarious cinematic composition which is Talledega Nights, please step away from this blog post and Google directions to your nearest Blockbuster. I’m not kidding.

In the midst of my randomness, I do have something fruitful to offer the politically-interested reader – well, hopefully. So, please stay tuned…

In any case, I recently found myself flipping through the pages of The Last Campaign. This compelling book reinvigorated my interests in political campaigning. Yes, I am tired of hearing about the nuances of that which is the Barack and Hilary campaign- aren’t we all – but, moving on, I laid in bed reading about a compelling man who connected with the hearts of American people from all walks of life. I read about a man who possessed a true thirst for a better America. This man was Robert F. Kennedy.

Then, I realized that I was reading the wrong (expletive) book for class. Damnit Amazon, sometimes there’s just too much going on your web page during check-out. Sigh. I’m still not taking “pays attention to detail” off of my resume…

Some time later, I found myself flipping through the pages of the other last campaign book(is this confusing you?) called The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman won the 1948 Election by Zachary Karabell, and I would like to provide my in-a-nutshell, extremely colloquial, analysis.

Insert nut shell(s) here—–>

1) The media was just all wrong about who really won at the polls. (Hmm..have we not heard this one before?)

2) Karabell thinks TV just messed up/changed politics. (He’s right. But, we’d like to say it didn’t. TV has changed our lives for the better, even if we are obsessed with it.) As he mentioned, TV did change politics. Americans were able to actually see the person they were voting for in a physical form. So what these means is that after the invention of television, it became really important for the presidential candidates to be good-looking. Now, we should really think about this here.

3) Truman was just a regular guy. (Regular guys can be president of the United States, unfortunately.)

4) The media predicted the wrong guy as the the winner in the 1948 election. (I said this already, didn’t I?)

5) 1948 prez campaign = different choices, differing ideologies, fair political procedures (Hell, the underdog won! Sorry guys, no recount necessary. We didn’t see this one coming.) Well, I could be overstating the “fair” part because politics is really like a game in the end, but at least there were distinct differences in the candidates that were running for office.

7) I know so much about Truman, now. It’s like we’re friends, even though the media didn’t want to be friends with him. (Thanks for the details, details, details, Karabell.) I mean, Truman just wasn’t the inner circle guy the media wanted, initially. Truman was the insurgent, and unfortunately he left office as an unpopular President. Is that what happens when you name your doctrine after yourself?

6) 1972 prez campaign = hola staged politics. (Excuse me Mr. Nixon, we believe that the American people would prefer that you finish the interview with a camera shot of you smiling and giving the wink and the thumbs-up. Later on, we can get the shots of you, the one-legged soldier, and the black baby. )