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Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision
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1555844 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, global corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It's not an escalation in Iraq, it's a surge; it's not the inheritance tax, it's the death tax; it's not drilling for oil, it's exploring for energy. Conservatives didn't intuit the path to persuasive messaging; they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can't learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the structure for effective communication, sharing exercises and examples for practical application. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 223
Dimensions: Length: 8.2" Width: 5.5" Height: 0.7"
Weight: 0.6 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Sep 1, 2008
ISBN 1576756270
EAN 9781576756270
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Availability 164 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 04:16.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Fantastic! Sep 17, 2009 |
| A great read! Informative and interesting information presented in a clear and concise format. Outstanding book! | | | | Thom Hartman's the man May 17, 2009 |
| Thom is the smartest person I've come across in a long time. I discovered him on Air America Radio. His books are as intelligent and well written as live broadcasts. Cracking the code is a must have for people like myself who live in the heart of a political red state. His book has been a life line for me to keep my sanity in the midst of a closed minded population. I plan to try his techniques on some or all of my family and friends not to get them to think like me, but only to exmine both sides of an issue with an open mind. Because like Thom, I don't feel we all have to think alike. But we do owe it to ourselves to examine everything we are told and not blindly accept media, or pundits words as truth. | | |  | Primer for political operatives Apr 1, 2009 |
Thom Hartmann is a talented multi-faceted player who defies easy description and has an impressive jack-of-all-trades resume to boot. He knows much about much. While reading his book, I kept trying to type-cast him but he kept defying my expectations; ready-made labels don't seem to stick to him. He's widely read and is a sophisticated political marketer who understands subtle appeals. He offers neat pseudo-psychological terms like "maps" and "territory" and "submodality" and "anchoring" and "ecology check" and "framing" which makes it seem like you're in a fun psychology class with a grinning sun-glassed professor who has a past history of being in trouble with the law.
But "Cracking the Code" is a rather cynical book for Democratic political operatives. It's a primer to teach Democratic marketers how to pull the same crap as Republicans. In that sense, Hartmann is a hard-headed realist who doesn't wonder whether the political game is good or right or honest or fair; rather, he says: here's the game; if you want to win, here's how. I'm a non-partisan reformer and there's an aspect of this which I find particularly disheartening because it once more exposes how democracy is dying right before my eyes. Politics has become a mean, manipulative, stupid game, and Mr. Hartmann is encouraging more players to play this game and I don't like it.
Democrats don't know how to tell a good story like Republicans do, he argues. Democrats have talking points; Republicans have stories. In a good story, feeling and emotion come first. He has a Machiavellian take on communication: "the meaning of a communication is the response you get". He advocates techniques to "anchor" a person or an issue with an emotion. He lists "Republican" words such as strength, choose, fair, pioneer, pride and contrasts them with "Democratic" words such as traitors, shallow, devour, criminal rights. The object is to become an "unconsciously competent communicator" like Ronald Reagan who fabricated stories like the supposed Chicago "welfare queen" with dozens of social security numbers, welfare checks, driving an expensive Cadillac (the Cadillac was the "anchor image" he says). Never mind that newspaper reporters couldn't locate this woman -- the closest match was a woman with two aliases who stole $[...] and didn't own a Cadillac. But the welfare queen image had done its job.
The picture that emerges is rather disturbing. America is a big dumb animal with two rival factions -- Republicans and Democrats -- each trying to figure out which emotional appeals to use to score big on election day. Americans are pretty tuned out most of the time, he writes, and are highly susceptible to crass marketing appeals like Mr. Hartmann would foist on us. And that's the sad reality.
No doubt Democratic marketing consultants will suck lessons from this book like thirsty camels after a desert crossing. It may help them win future elections. But I think American democracy is bigger than marketing pitches and crude appeals and unthinking citizens and the mindlessness of partisan politics.
I see America as being in serious trouble, with global financial meltdowns, massive corruption, unresponsive Congressional officials, excessive power in the presidency, partisan gridlock, a dangerous concentration of power in the federal government, and looming issues such as nuclear terrorism, global warming, and social security underfunding. It's time to rise above the mud fight. I think the only way to restore American democracy is by a Second Constitutional Convention, and I am summoning America's brightest thinkers to Independence Hall to craft a superior document, based on the current one, which will fix these problems (I've detailed these problems in other reviews and in my book). And Mr. Hartmann, while being dynamic and sharp and entertaining and perhaps a rising political marketer, is not on my list of delegates.
Thomas W. Sulcer
author of "Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism" (this site)
| | | | Highly recommended for any library, whether business, political or general-interest Dec 13, 2008 |
What is political communication, how has the Right mastered it, and how can other groups fight back? Thom Hartmann's background as a psychotherapist and ad executive lends to a series of techniques gained from real life and applied successfully to real-world scenarios. Plenty of case history examples document visual communication differences, discovering more powerful words and methods of imparting them, and more. Highly recommended for any library, whether business, political or general-interest.
| | | | So far so great . . . Dec 12, 2008 |
| I have not had time to read this book yet, but my husband has been thumbing through it and reading bits and pieces to me. So far, I love it, and can't wait for the chance to sit down and read it all the way through. | | | Write your own review about Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision
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