Interesting book. He is, I suppose the anti Machiavelli. I tried to get it from the library to avoid giving his estate the royalties, but they didn't carry it.
Here are his tactics:
1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experiences of your people (your volunteers).
3. Wherever possible, go outside the experiences of your enemy (here he cites Sherman's march to the sea, although Caleb Carr would probably just say that is another extension of the Roman concept of 'total war').
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long is a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain pressure on the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard enough you will see the counterside (positive).
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative (know what you want when you win).
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
Much of the rest of the book is dedicated to the qualities of a community organizers, self-aggrandizement, etc. Here is what I have taken away from the book, however.
1. If more people were aware that a community organizer is essentially a manipulative amoral huckster, we might not have been saddled with four years of this. I am guilty of assuming he was a clipboard holding idealist, but if he has internalized even 1/3 of this poison, he is without scruples. I was worried about Rahm before as the ultimate "ends justifies the means" guy, but there is an entire section on what ends can be justified regardless of the means.
2. Obama seems remarkably brittle and susceptible to rule 5. This is a man who is desperately afraid of being laughed at. He's not afraid of self-deprecating humor, but he dictates the terms of that. I can't point to anything in particular, but I see him as very afraid of being the butt of a joke.
3. The town hall meetings over health care did a great job of taking our elected representatives out of the realm of their experience. Barney Frank and Sheila Jackson Lee come to mind.
4. The timing of the recess (while happenstance), allowed the town hall meetings to freeze, target, personalize and polarize. If the recess hadn't happened when it did, the huckster-in-chief could have used his beneficence to counteract some of the fallout earlier.
5. We lack the benefit of a useful alternative selection besides the status quo, but polls seem to indicate that that's enough.
Anyway, just some thoughts. The man was obviously very bright, but sold his soul at some point. It did strike me as The Prince through the looking glass.
Didn't know if anyone else had read it...
