All Politics Is Local: and Other Rules of the Game

No one knows the inside rules of politics better than Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House and a master of his trade. Having spent fifty years in elected office, from the back wards of Cambridge to the back rooms of Congress, O'Neill has learned what it takes to get elected - and what it takes to stay in power. In All Politics Is Local, O'Neill shares his secrets of success.
With colorful humor and street-corner smarts, O'Neill explains the rules of the game in a straightforward and entertaining manner. First, he states a fundamental rule of politics, such as "Your Word Is Everything," "Don't Give Speeches That Are Pure Bunk," and "Today's Adversary May Be Tomorrow's Ally." Then O'Neill tells a story to illustrate why these rules are true. "Storytelling is the easy part," O'Neill writes. "Sometimes I had to think hard what the principle was."
O'Neill has spent a lifetime studying our greatest politicians at work, from Franklin Roosevelt and James Michael Curley to Bill Clinton. He has played poker with Richard Nixon, wheeled and dealed with LBJ, and feuded with Ronald Reagan. In All Politics Is Local, O'Neill reveals what he learned from those experiences and many others.
Along the way, O'Neill provides a lifetime's worth of insight and advice about the political process - the four ingredients to every campaign; why every politician should have a good accountant; how to work the press; why it's so important to use clout; and when to protest.
Tip O'Neill is a national treasure. All Politics Is Local will be enjoyed and studied for generations.

In this day of cookie-cutter, blow-dried political candidates, it's refreshing to recall the rules of the game with a master politician. Former Speaker of the House O'Neill ( Man of the House ) and Hymel, his former press secretary, here compile a primer for the campaigner. O'Neill knows how to humanize the political process. He provides us with wonderful anecdotes: from LBJ riding a police horse in downtown Boston to how Harry Truman became a U.S. Senator (Missouri political boss Tom Pendergast thought Truman "wasn't smart enough" to be a county assessor). "For me," writes O'Neill, "politics always was about values combined with instincts. Put those together and you get a rule." Among his rules are these: no contribution is too small; never get introduced to the crowd at a sporting event, only boos will ensue; to be a successful public speaker, memorize poetry; avoid bunk; remember names; tip well. O'Neill is also outspoken on diverse topics ranging from term limits to whiskey. A book that all 535 members of Congress should be made to read. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clich‚d counsel from retired Speaker of the House O'Neill, whose short-take effusions here attest that brevity isn't necessarily the soul of wit--or wisdom. Drawing on experiences gained in an elective career spanning more than half a century (and on the editorial assistance of his former press secretary), O'Neill offers what he characterizes as a primer on politics. Actually, his text encompasses a scattershot collection of bipartisan precepts coupled with putatively illustrative yarns. Grouped under seven main headings (``Campaigning,'' ``Serving Constituents,'' ``Using Clout,'' etc.), the author's, as it were, tips for aspiring officeholders will strike most readers as elementary if not downright obvious. Cases in point include bland reminders that would-be lawmakers should be willing to compromise; know any audience they're addressing; remember their roots; and take care of the voters who elect them. Nor does O'Neill shy from supporting items on his own agenda--e.g., by deprecating term limits and lauding the two- party system. There are also some general-interest advisories here, including guidance on how to lobby congressmen. Far less charming than O'Neill's first (Man of the House, 1987). The wispy anecdotal dicta here will do little to enhance the author's status as either a savvy pol or as an elder statesman worth heeding. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A kind of "junior Reader's Digest" version of O'Neill's popular political memoir, Man of the House ( LJ 10/15/87), this personalized political primer boils down many of the entertaining true and apocryphal stories from the first book to bare-bones incidents and one-line lessons; no story runs more than three pages, and many are shorter. In these anecdotes about his own experiences and those of the politically famous (such as Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Reagan), O'Neill treats politics both as a game during which he must outwit opponents and as a serious vocation whose purpose is to serve his constituents. Always straightforward and occasionally funny (but not as often as he wants to be), the former Speaker of the House serves up a platter of trite homilies and political folk wisdom that have served him very well: "Be in the right place at the right time," "never criticize the family of an opponent," "in politics, your word is everything," "don't forget the people who elected you"--and "keep your speeches short." He did here, and very few readers will fail to get his messages.
- Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.