Right from the start;: A chronicle of the McGovern campaign

by Gary Hart

Book by Hart, Gary

Genres: Politics, History

334 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Gary Hart represented the state of Colorado in the U.S. Senate from 1975 until 1987. He is the Wirth Chair professor at the University of Colorado, chairs both the Council for a Livable World and the American Security Project, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and he was cochair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century. The commission performed the most comprehensive review of national security since 1947, predicted the terrorist attacks on America, and proposed a sweeping overhaul of U.S. national security structures and policies for the post-Cold War century and the age of terrorism. Senator Hart is the author of 17 books, including The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats, The Shield and the Cloak: Security in the Commons, and God and Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics.
Read his blog on Huffington Post:

Reviews

[Rashan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary Hart's "Right From The Start," chronicling his time at the helm of the George McGovern campaign for the presidency in 1972 is not a read for everyone. Hart, previously a lawyer and major McGovern supporter started off organizing Colorado and other western states for the senator before being lured into taking on a larger, full time roll as head of the campaign. Though he had a family back home, Hart began commuting back and forth to Washington and keeping a very tight and copiously noted journal of each development in the campaign and wrote the book in this journalistic format. The action is organized by years and months, with individual entries detailing the action of particularly momentous days and weeks of the campaign. This format can lead to dry reading if you aren't interested in the play by play nature of the campaign. But if you are into the nuts and bolts, the gritty mechanics in this tome will very clearly illustrate what is needed to organize and manage a national campaign and the specific choices that McGovern, Hart, and the rest of the leadership team made in an effort to communicate their message to the voting populace.

[Vincent Solomeno · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Gary Hart's "Right from the Start" on a dust covered shelf in a musty used bookstore. The ill fated 1972 general election campaign of U.S. Senator George McGovern has already interested me. In hindsight, the choices McGovern and his team made in the race against President Richard M. Nixon seem naïve at best, stupid at worse. Reading Hart's first person account of his experience as a young upstart managing McGovern's campaign, you gain a greater appreciation for the moment they lived in and the rationale behind the decisions they made. I cannot say I put the book down and said, "They were right!" However, I did put the book down with a greater appreciation for the energy and idealism of a time (not unlike our own) when an insurgent outsider took on the political establishment.

[Douglas Graney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book away a long time ago so I guess it wasn't that great.