The Recovering Politician's Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis Paperback – May 29, 2013

by Jonathan Miller

Featured on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and HuffPost Live. Columbia University Prof. Marc Lamont Hill "Make sure you check out this book. It's an awesome book, and a great contribution to the national conversation." In The Recovering Politician's Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis, more than a dozen "recovering politicians" share their twelve step program on how to survive crises - from highly publicized and politicized scandals, to smaller, more intimate interpersonal struggles. They outline deliberate, focused and vigorous courses of action and reaction, gleaned from their own experiences - often dramatic, sometimes painful - under the piercing lights of the political arena. Crisis management, of course, has captured the Scandal's Olivia Pope and The Good Wife's Eli Gold have brought the crisis manager to the mainstream; PR firms are racing to rebrand themselves as crisis advisers; and it seems like every Clinton and Bush era senior official is offering his or her wares or writing a book on the subject. Moreover, many of the most widely-read news stories of the past few decades have involved politicians, athletes, and celebrities struggling through crises that involve sex, lies, audiotape, drugs, criminal activity, and/or unethical behavior. Just recently, consider the cases of Lance Armstrong, Manti Te'o, Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, David Petraeus, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Penn State football, even Beyonce's lip synching at the presidential inauguration. Most Americans probably view scandal through the prism of ideology, partisanship, or even conspiracy. At the heart, however, are flawed human beings making mistakes, acting emotionally, and desperately trying to preserve their reputations and careers. In The Recovering Politician's Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis, a diverse, bi-partisan collection of former politicians, draw lessons from their own scandals - ranging from allegations of ethical and sexual impropriety, to suffering through alcoholism and depression, to being censured and forced out of office, to serving time in federal prison - and share their guidance on how everyday readers can transcend crisis, recover, and launch their own second acts.

Paperback

First published May 28, 2013

About the author

Jonathan Miller, The Recovering Politician, is the former two-term elected Kentucky State Treasurer and the author of the critically-acclaimed The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America.

In his nearly two decades of public service, the RP also held several other senior positions in state and federal government, including serving in Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s Cabinet as Secretary of Finance and Administration, as Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Energy, and as Legislative Director for Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN).

Reviews

[Meg Merante · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned of this book through Jeff Smith's "Do As I Say" blog on City & State, which I look forward to reading every month, and figured this book would be more of the same type of advice. More or less, it was. All the different chapters are written by "recovering politicians" (by the way, I love that description), reflecting on their time or attempt at holding office, and the things that derailed or almost derailed their path.

For anyone hoping to manage a politician's communication efforts, I think this book should be a must-read (just be prepared to read about Bill Clinton multiple, multiple times as many authors use him as the go-to example to illustrate their point), because the authors don't only write about the bad things that happen to them or because of their actions, but the valuable lessons they likely wouldn't have learned otherwise.