Campaign Boot Camp: Basic Training for Future Leaders
by Christine Pelosi
I’ll tell you right now, if you’re not a Democrat, you’re not going to like this book. It was written by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. She proudly references her mother’s campaigns throughout the book as examples, and obviously she wouldn’t have had any sort of political career if it weren’t for her mother’s success. So, if you’re a liberal college student, wanting to learn the political ABCs, this is the book for you.
I took two years of undergraduate political science classes, as well as a semester of graduate classes, and this book was required reading during one of them. It’s a very good start, and I don’t mean that to be insulting. It’s not particularly detailed, but it walks you through the basics of deciding to run for office, assembling a campaign team, and figuring out how to reach your base of potential voters. This is not a hard-core book for people who actually want to hold office; this is for students. If you take her advice to heart, you should be ready to run your first mock campaign in class.
Also, keep in mind, this book was written in 2007, and the political landscape has drastically changed since then. But if you’d like to read about a, let’s say, “simpler” time, it’s a good one.
I took two years of undergraduate political science classes, as well as a semester of graduate classes, and this book was required reading during one of them. It’s a very good start, and I don’t mean that to be insulting. It’s not particularly detailed, but it walks you through the basics of deciding to run for office, assembling a campaign team, and figuring out how to reach your base of potential voters. This is not a hard-core book for people who actually want to hold office; this is for students. If you take her advice to heart, you should be ready to run your first mock campaign in class.
Also, keep in mind, this book was written in 2007, and the political landscape has drastically changed since then. But if you’d like to read about a, let’s say, “simpler” time, it’s a good one.