Interesting read even if the content is questionable

books:


	• Confessions of a Political Hitman: My Secret Life of Scandal, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Dirty Attacks That ... Stephen Marks Sourcebooks Trade, 2008 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Interesting read even if the content is questionable

It was a quick, easy and entertaining read. I wouldn't call it a literary masterpiece, but it was worth reading. I'm glad I did.

The loss of a couple of stars comes from the fact that much of the "logic" appeared to be extremely flawed. Many times, his targets were judged guilty of improprieties for doing things that quite frankly are commonly accepted business practices and not particularly unethical or improper. And although Marks now claims to be a centrist, in many respects he remains far right and lacks objectivity. Some of his conclusions put this fact center stage.

The other issue I had relates to my frustration with people that must classify everyone and everything as either conservative or liberal. The world just isn't so simple - even if the book is.

Fun read, but now back to the serious stuff.

for more information click here

The truth can be messy, but necessary!

I recommend this book, if you REALLY want to find out the tricks of the political trade. It can get seedy out there, but don't you want to know, so you can make informed decisions on candidates? I sure did. : )

for more information click here

Exposing others - and himself

With his 2007 autobiography CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN, former Republican operative Stephen Marks details his career examining public records of politicians in order to derail their electoral campaigns. Drawing on a decade of personal experience and a lifetime of observations, author Marks makes a strong case for negative campaigning as the best bet to swing fence-sitters to vote for your candidate. A year in advance of it happening, for example, the author correctly predicts Barack Obama's opponents using the Illinois Senator's outspoken minister against him.

It may interest you to note Stephen Marks does not mention publicly-financed campaigns or instant run-off voting as solutions to the problems of today's moneyed interests-controlled elections. Perhaps he could study states and cities where public election financing or I.R.V. is the law to see if negative ads still affect vote counts.

Throughout CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN, Stephen Marks refers to political discourse as liberal left versus conservative right. In reality, the wealthy minority's efforts to supersede the middle class/poor majority are what drives political affairs. History is nothing more than the affluent stealing from and dominating the masses.

Often appearing to be a Republican Party sycophant in CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN, Stephen Marks:

- regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says, "those on the left actually root for . . . America's defeat." However, author Marks does not support that claim with the name of even one political progressive who ever said such a thing.

- supports the Clinton Administration's Republican-esque Welfare "reform" that forced single mothers to work, ignoring the fact that the majority of Welfare beneficiaries are children.

- says Christie Whitman was an "enormously popular New Jersey governor." As Whitman barely won her 1997 re-election against Jim McGreevey, does that sound like someone enormously popular with Garden State voters?

- subscribes to Orwellian definitions of terms such as "liberal" and "welfare." The former means "tolerant," and the latter "wellbeing," but CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN uses the words as if they mean the opposite.

- says Reverend Al Sharpton once said, "Off the pigs," a declaration the activist never made.

- describes himself as conservative yet speaks highly of the ayatollah-friendly, borrow-and-spend-America-into-debt Ronald Reagan.

- does not raise the fact that George W. Bush broke his 2000 campaign promise not to nation-build and says nothing about the debt into which Bush has borrowed and spent America. Last time I checked, conservatives do not support conquering other countries or spending on credit.

- objects to paroling prisoners, yet is silent on the fact that convicted felon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a free man. America has more people in prison than China and Russia combined; is author Marks aware of that, and does he think its enormous prison population makes America, land of the free, a better place?

You will find a number of typographical errors in CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN, and to me such proofreading errors symbolize a work still in progress. Not the book, though; rather, author Stephen Marks. Despite sounding like the AM-talk radio listener you avoid after making the mistake of sitting near him on the train once, at times Stephen Marks' words show a man reconsidering his beliefs and actions. For example, he comes out against the baloney that is "tort reform," which in reality is a gift to insurance companies and corporations that destroy people's lives. He rejects the anti-immigration hysteria Republicans use to divide and conquer voters. Also, author Marks expresses empathy for poor and working-class individuals whose lack of education does not afford them the opportunity to earn a decent living; he never reaches the conclusion that no American who works for a living should be poor, however.

Okay, so that's only three things versus the eight Republican Kool-Aid statements I refuted above, and there were other hard-line G.O.P. comments I didn't mention for the sake of keeping this review shorter than the actual book. But no one changes overnight, or even in the time it takes to write an autobiography.

Read CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL HITMAN. Stephen Marks' legwork and ability to recognize politically-damaging information will impress you almost as much as his will to wear his heart on his sleeve.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2

The most influential people in a political race aren't the campaign managers, the strategists or even the candidates themselves. In fact, you won't even find them on a campaign's list of official members or volunteers.

Enter the world of the political hitman. Few know that these operatives exist, and campaigns go to great effort to distance themselves from the people who dig up their dirt. But political hitmen wield a secretly powerful position in today's American politics, where scandals derail campaigns and negative campaigning decides who gets elected and who doesn't.

For the past twelve years, Stephen Marks has worked silently behind the scenes as one of the country's top opposition researchers: a political hitman and an assassin of reputations. Confessions of a Political Hitman is Marks's intensely personal and explosive story through more than a decade in the underbelly of American political campaigns.

From his early days in politics through his rapid movement into the secret world of opposition research, Marks discovers a talent for digging up dirt and uncovering political liabilities. His work involves a wide scope of American politics, from state governments to presidential elections to the Republican Revolution. But the exciting work soon leads to disillusionment as candidates he believed in turn out to be worse than expected, and hypocrisy abounds on both sides of the political fence. Eventually Marks finds himself living in the shadows, both politically and personally, and searching for escape.

In Confessions of a Political Hitman, Marks reveals the fascinating and incredible details of what really goes on behind the scenes in American campaigning-including the political realities behind the campaigns, careers and attack ads of some of Washington's heavy hitters, including George W. Bush, John Kerry, Jack Abramoff and countless others.

Confessions of a Political Hitman is one man's story about secrets, lies, hypocrisy and influence-painting a troubling picture of whom we elect and how they get elected.

for more information click here