How to Win an Election: As Told in “The Election Game”

Introduction: Joe Napolitan is a political consultant, who travels all over the United States representing many different candidates. He represents candidates running for governor, senate, congress, vice-president, and president. He says that there are three factors to winning an election, defining the message, selecting the vehicles, and implementing.

Conflicts: Man vs. Man and Man vs. Man

Joe Napolitan was representing mostly liberal democrats, running against conservative republicans. Naturally, in an election, all the candidates are running against each other, trying to win a political position.

Joe would sometimes disagree with the candidates that he was representing, and to ensure his candidate’s best chance of winning his election, he would do things that his candidate might not want him to do. This created problems in some of the campaigns, but Joe Napolitan was very successful, so most candidates did not have many complaints.

Rising Action: Joe talks about some of his campaigns with candidates like Mr. Humphrey, members of the Kennedy Family, Tom O’Connor, Mr. McArthy, George Mahoney, and many, many more. He explains in detail how he ran each campaign, trying to get his candidate elected.

Climax: Humphrey loses the presidential election to Nixon in 1968.

Falling action: Joe explained to reasons why he thought that Humphrey lost the race and what he thought they could have done better to win it. (Humphrey’s presidential campaign was the main point of the story).

Resolution: The reader sees the results of all of the political campaigns that Joe Napolitan represented.

This book was a very good piece of writing. It was jam packed with factual information, and examples of how different campaign strategies helped win and lose certain races. This book is sort of a slow reader, so it can get somewhat boring at times. If you are not interested in politics, then this book is definitely not for you. Otherwise, if you do like superb political literature, then this would be the book for you. Joe Napolitan know his field of political consulting very well, and he has a vast knowledge of multiple different campaigns. He talks about all the different ways hat a person can go about working towards winning a campaign. If you are interested in the Humphrey vs. Nixon campaign of 1968, then you would enjoy reading this book.

There are two prevalent themes in this book. The first one would be, if you are devoted to win something, then for better or for worse, do anything you can to win. The second one would be, to be a good leader, you need to be able to make timely, decisive decisions, and never look back on them. Joe Napolital wrote, “When you are in control of your candidate’s success, and your own reputation is on the line, it is most vital to make certain that you make hasty, intelligent decisions, and that you never look back on them.” Throughout the book Joe wrote of multiple example of ways the he, and other campaign managers either made, or blew their candidate’s elections by being good, or bad leaders. He kept emphasizing that fact that it was completely essential that a campaign manager makes quick decisions. If you are split one way or another, then analyze the positives and negitives of both options, and pick the option best for you. Never look back on any of your decisions, or that will lead to certain failure.