{"product_id":"playing-with-fire-9780399563140","title":"Playing with Fire","description":"\u003ch2\u003eSummary\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFrom the celebrated host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, an important and enthralling new account of the presidential election that changed everything, and created American politics as we know it today.\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong before Lawrence O’Donnell was the anchor of his own political talk show, he was the Harvard Law-trained political aide to Senator Patrick Moynihan, one of postwar America’s wisest political minds. The 1968 election was O’Donnell’s own political coming of age, and PLAYING WITH FIRE represents his master class in American electioneering, as well as an extraordinary human drama that captures a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNothing went to script. LBJ was confident he’d dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson’s greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren’t prepared to challenge their own party’s incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth façade behind which he feverishly held his party’s right and left wings in the fold through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace. But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason. The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eLawrence O’Donnell is the host of “The Last Word” on MSNBC. Formerly an Emmy Award-winning executive producer and writer for “The West Wing,” O’Donnell also served as senior advisor to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), chief of staff to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and the Senate Finance Committee. He is the author of Deadly Force and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Born in Boston, O’Donnell graduated from Harvard University.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWith black \u0026amp; white images\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHardcover: 496 pages\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePublisher: Penguin Press\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePolitical Science \/ Political Process\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Penguin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50537628729427,"sku":"1940723X","price":22.46,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0732\/1937\/5187\/files\/3705528.jpg?v=1791993258","url":"https:\/\/www.deepdiscount.com\/products\/playing-with-fire-9780399563140","provider":"Deep Discount","version":"1.0","type":"link"}