POLITICAL BOOKNOTES
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Deep Blue Funk and Other Stories: Portrait of Teenage Parents. Daniel B. Frank. University of Chicago Press, $3.95. The author, a graduate student at the University of...
...Michael Hiestand The Making of the New Deal: The Insiders Speak...
...Harvard University Press, $20...
...Mark Bisnow, Southern IIlinois University Press, $14.95, The probable prototype of the disheveled Anderson aide in Doonesbury, Bisnow began working as a congressional aide to John Anderson at a time when he was “one of the few people in the Western Hemisphere immersed enough in political trivia to know” that Anderson was mulling a presidential candidacy...
...Bisnow’s real purpose is to condemn the high-priced political consultant David Garth (who, it should be noted, relegated Bisnow to back-room policy research), and the bureaucracy he brought to Anderson’s candidacy as an independent...
...We also read how hopes for the Republican nomination were partly thwarted by the early failure to collect the necessary signatures for the Pennsylvania primary-though a “certifiable mental patient at an insane asylum” had made it...
...They reminisce about the days when they were greenhorns flocking to government service, vowing to jolt the country out of the Great Depression...
...As one of these advance men, I can attest to Bisnow’s accuracy...
...It would be a shame, however, if this book were dismissed as merely anecdotal...
...The author, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, spent two years tutoring and talking to lowermiddleclass black teenagers about having babies out of wedlock...
...These women-girls, really-are not stupid...
...Many considered abortions and rejected them, often on principle, and they express surprisingly little regret over what they have done...
...Katie Louchheim, ed...
...and Anderson’s first campaign manager, “hired to make uninhibited comments:’ advising the candidate to forget running altogether...
...Katie Louchheim, a New Deal veteran, compiled in 24 chapters the reminiscences of over three dozen New Deal insiders...
...wife Keke scissoring Anwar Sadat out of an old family picture and then using it in the official campaign brochure...
...they know what birth control is and where to get it...
...Bisnow argues that the delays and decisions based on “the lowest common denominator of opinion” made the Doonesbury days actually seem more efficient...
...A baby often represents the only means of control, excitement, and status in an otherwise bleak life...
...Suddenly, a bevy of unfamiliar aides suffocated Anderson...
...Jonathan Alter Diary of a Dark Horse: The 1980 Anderson Presidential Campaign...
...Even...
...The result is a highly revealing and jargon-free look into black culture...
...Skeletal advance crews became “squads:’ crisscrossing the country in “a grand style” befitting a Wall Street law firm...
...Where office workers were once frenetic, “now if someone felt overburdened, rather than working longer and harder and asking others to pitch in, enough money was available so that it was tempting just to hire a new person to help...
...Part of the problem is an unwillingness to interrupt spontaneous sex, but more often these young women want the babies...
...At a time when lawyers across the country were volunteering their services to help with ballot access, Garth hired one of Washington’s most prestigiousand expensive-law firms...
...We watch Bisnow upping candidate Anderson’s much vaunted gasoline tax proposal 25 cents to 50 while the congressman is off swimming...
Vol. 15 • November 1983 • No. 8
