Reviewing Sneaking Into the Flying Circus by Alexandra Pelosi

Reviewing Sneaking Into the Flying Circus

Book:  Sneaking Into the Flying Circus | Author: Alexandra Pelosi

Cities:Seattle

Dates: 20 to 30 September 2005

One Sentence Summary

An unwilling political reporter and documentarian with previous political baggage travels with the Democratic campaigners in 2004 to see how they do things, who they connect with, how they get votes and why.

Sneaking Into the Flying Circus

Authors/Editors: Alexandra Pelosi

Source: Free Press

Publication: Political Commentary

Publication Date: 2005

URL: 

Keywords: united states, presidential, politics, democrat, republican, documentarian, documentary, travelogue, senator, howard dean, george bush, john kerry, john Edwards, dick Gephardt, joe Lieberman, wes clarke

Disciplines: sociology, politics

Findings

• Politicians like money
• Politicians are harried
• Politicians are handled
• No one really knows what is going on
• If you make a political expose about the sitting president on one campaign, people might not trust you on the next
• Slow and steady doesn’t win the race

One Paragraph Review

Alexandra Pelosi in 2000 traveled with George Bush and made a documentary out of it. In 2004, she decided to travel with the Democrats. Democrats watch movies too and probably liked what Pelosi had created. But when she showed up at their party, they were a little on guard. Pelosi reviews each of the campaigns for style, substance, and joie de vivre. Her insights are valuable in that she reacts on a personal level to each of the campaigners, despite how they may have treated her one way or the other (but she is sure to let you know how they treated her). This is a truly valuable book if only for the fact that it lets you see that our view of candidates is certainly distorted, but the candidate’s self perception I likewise distorted. The unanswered question is … where does the distortion actually begin? 

One Page Review

Alexandra Pelosi befriends people. Alexandra Pelosi pisses people off. Alexandra Pelosi doesn’t do either of these things intentionally, I don’t think. Rather she does it as a matter of course. It’s who she is. 

In 2000, Pelosi created the campaign film / HBO event “Journeys with George.” She videotaped the Bush 2000 campaign and showed us why he won and why maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. In 2004, she traveled with the Democratic primary campaigners. In this book, she seems surprised and hurt that the campaigns would push her off.

Perhaps she should listen to Mr Bush when he said: “…fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. We can't get fooled again." 

There’s two sides to this book, on one hand we have Alexandra’s discussion about how the press in general and she in particular are treated by each campaign and on the other we have how the candidates and the campaigns have different ways of campaigning. While either one may be annoying to some, taking a step back from the personalities involved and party affiliation – it is a fantastic view of someone in the middle of an utterly absurd situation.

Pelosi knows that the entire campaign is so micro-managed that all true human interaction or spontaneity are removed from it. She sees smart journalists being reduced to fighting for seats on buses, sandwiches as press stops and, of course, photo op positions. She sees career politicians and neophytes, both of whom joined the race to make a difference, never stopping long enough for meaningful conversations – never being able to make that difference. She sees voters making decisions based on candidates blowing into town, buying a watermelon, and shooting off to the next stop. (Some see this as positive and will vote for, others as negative and will vote against.)  

She tells personal stories about how she likes and respects certain candidates because of who they are and how they relate one on one. She then describes them in the dynamic of a presidential campaign and shows clearly what we already knew: competence doesn’t necessarily win races.

For me this all boils down to the fact that people in the US have changed their primary affiliations from the colleges, churches and labor unions to their Political Parties. And we only have two. So all of human thought, desire, fear and aspiration is now boiled down in the US to two parties. Therefore, the parties focus more on market share and driving people from the other party to theirs than they do on actually electing the right person for a particular job. People join the party and back people running in their party simply because of their affiliation and not because of their thoughtfulness. In this case, you can’t expect that the system will operate in a healthy way.