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This book discusses the words and pictures that constituted coverage of the 1992 presidential campaign on ABC and CNN. It addresses the implications of the news product for the viewing audience and the impact of the forces that create television news on the political system.

Given how the media portray the political system, how can we educate ourselves about politics without feeling alienated? The amount of information now available to the public about government is without precedent, and contemporary media bring the political action closer than ever before. But in an age when reports on the manipulative behavior and character flaws of public figures appear as frequently as coverage of policy issues, many people are tuning out.Remote and Controlled examines the issue of widespread cynicism in an era of abundant information, asking whether it is possible to consume a steady diet of mainstream media and still understand and respect the political process. Starting with central examples of television's political coverage and the media's focus on the president, the author explores a variety of media?from newspapers and radio to MTV and computer networks?and political events and institutions. Both electoral politics and governance are explored through examples that range from FDR's fireside radio chats and the Kennedy-Nixon television debates to Vietnam and Watergate, on up to Clinton's war room, Perot's infomercials, C-SPAN and Congress, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.Against a historical backdrop of political, technological, and institutional change, the text raises critical questions for a society plugged into Rush, Oprah, and USA Today: How do the media both magnify and undermine the president? Can televised town meetings replace the real thing? How do politicians seek to control the flow of information, and what do the media do about it? Does the information explosion provide greater diversity or simply greater convenience? The second edition of this acclaimed text has been revised and updated to examine media coverage of recent events including the Monica Lewinsky scandal and other high-profile stories. In the process, the author sheds light on the ultimate dilemma of whether an informed public will participate in a system in which campaigns are portrayed as if they were war, policymaking is depicted as if it were a campaign, and none of the participants?reporters included?appears particularly noble or worthy.

"American Political Parties is a core textbook on political parties in the United States. The book places the American party system into a framework designed around the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. It argues that the two-party system in the United States began with a common agreement on the key values of freedom, individual rights, and equality of opportunity, but they disagreed-often vehemently-over how to implement these ideals into a form of governance. Hamilton wanted to marry freedom to a strong, active federal government with an energetic President who would act on behalf of all citizens. Jefferson believed that freedom should be married to local civic virtue with governmental responsibilities placed primarily at the local level. Today, Hamiltonian Nationalism finds its home in the Democratic Party, while Republicans have espoused Jeffersonian Localism since 1964. In addition to this historical framework, American Political Parties examines a range of topics, including marketing and social media, campaign finance, reforms in the presidential nominating process, political demography, and third parties. In this new edition (previously published as Party On!), the authors reflect on the future of the parties in the wake of the 2020 election"--

chapter Introduction Of Elephants and Donkeys, Candidates and Institutions, Patriots and Progressives -- chapter 1 Political Parties in an American Setting -- chapter 2 The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Party Politics -- chapter 3 Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century -- chapter 4 Nominating Presidents in a Time of Trump -- chapter 5 Party Brand Loyalty and the American Voter -- chapter 6 Parties and Social Media -- chapter 7 Campaign Finance and Transitional Political Parties -- chapter 8 Elected Officials and the New Partisanship -- chapter 9 Third Parties in the Trump Era.

From the early demise of Trent Lott at the hands of bloggers to the agonized scream of Howard Dean; from Daily Kos and the blogosphere to the rise of Twitter and Facebook, politics and new media have co-existed and evolved in rapid succession. Here, an academic and practitioner team up to consider how new and old media technologies mix with combustible politics to determine, in real time, the shape of the emerging political order. Our political moment shares with other realigning periods the sense that political parties are failing to address the public interest. In an era defined by the collapse of the political center, extreme income inequality, rapidly changing demography, and new methods of communicating and organizing, a second-generation online progressive movement fueled by email and social media is coming into its own. In this highly readable text, the authors-one a scholar of Internet politics, the other a leading voice of the first generation netroots-draw on unique data and on-the-ground experience to answer key questions at the core of our tumultuous politics. How has Internet activism changed in form and function? How have the left and right changed with it? How does this affect American political power?