Power Game
How Washington Works
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
Washington, D.C. The one city that affects all our lives. The one city where the game has only one name: Power. Hedrick Smith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, takes us inside the beltway to show who wields the most power—and for what ends.
The Power Game explains how some members of Congress have built personal fortunes on PAC money, how Michael Deaver was just the tip of the influence-peddling iceberg, how “dissidents” in the Pentagon work to keep the generals honest, how insiders and “leakers” use the Times and The Washington Post and their personal bulletin boards.
Congressional staffers more powerful than their bosses, media advisors more powerful than the media, money that not only talks but intimidated and threatens. That’s Washington. That’s The Power Game.
Praise for Power Game
“The Power Game may be the most sweeping and in many ways the most impressive portrait of the culture of the federal government to appear in a single work in many decades. . . . Knowledgeable and informative.”—The New York Times Book Review
“There are oodles of good yarns in this book about the nature of power and the eccentricities that accompany it. . . . Delightfully fresh . . . [Hedrick] Smith is a superb writer.”—The Washington Post
“Not only the inside stuff, but the insightful stuff—an original view of the power playing.”—William Safire
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith takes the reader inside the political process in Washington, discusses changes over the past decade and the present network, then explains how the parts fit together. Having enjoyed "a fifty-yard-line seat at the power game'' for a quarter century as a New York Times correspondent and bureau chief, he is well placed to report on the new congressional assertiveness against the presidency, the explosion of special-interest politics, the massive growth in staff power, the burgeoning of video politicsas well as such long-established goings-on as the partnership between the military services, defense contractors and members of Congress. The book is not only a survey and analysis of major dimension, it is a probing documentary: in discussing how political coalitions are arranged or how congressional mavericks play ``porcupine politics,'' for instance, Smith often presents the action itself in scenes with dialogue. Many of the anecdotes and quotes found in these pages will become part of the national folklore. A sure-fire bestseller. BOMC featured selection.