A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House
Humor, Blunders, and Other Oddities from the Presidential Campaign Trail
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
Charles Osgood, one of America's favorite news personalities, offers a hilarious compendium of anecdotes from the last seventy years of presidential campaigns.
With anecdotes from Harry Truman to JFK to George W. Bush, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House captures the wit and humor of the campaign trail. Culled from speeches, interviews, press conferences, as well as articles written by and about the candidates--no source is left untapped.
From Bob Dole telling reporters after a loss in the primary that "I slept like a baby--every two hours I woke up and cried," and Barry Goldwater's comment that his talkative opponent Hubert Humphreys "has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts up to 340," to Adlai Stevenson declaring that "If I talk over the people's head, Ike must be talking under their feet," this is the go-to source for campaign humor.
Just when America most needs a good laugh, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House makes the seemingly endless race to the presidency a lot more fun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this charming anecdotal history, author and CBS Sunday Morning anchor Osgood presents 56 years of quips in presidential campaigning: "Politicians say funny things all the time," writes Osgood, but presidential campaigns bring out "their best-and worst-behavior." Organized chronologically and dedicated to fair time-including commentators, running mates and the occasional third-party candidate-the collection covers many famous quotes (Nixon's "I know winning is a lot more fun," the first Bush's "I'll try to hold my charisma in check," Lloyd Bensen to Dan Qualye: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"), but the real gems are the ones Osgood unearths, which show these larger-than-life historical figures in a fresh-often more intimate-light. They also show that presidential politics has always been in large part a nasty, petty business, even for iconic leaders like Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. Anyone remotely interested in U.S. history or politics will find this an enjoyable tour, and those who want some insight into the current contest will get a quick, quirky lesson from his coverage of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Given the familial Bush tendency to misspeak, readers may detect a slight imbalance in the latter part of the collection; still, Osgood's latest should still have wide appeal.