Thursday, November 11, 2004

Political Books

Some suggested reading notes are within the comments. Please put in your notes too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Besides the obligatory Ayn Rand books and obvious reference materials like the Pennsylvania Manual, Tim has found several useful books for LPPa members to read. They center on the nuts and bolts of campaigning and on sales and persuasion
techniques. These are the areas where improvement will most dramatically affect the LPPa.

Campaign Books: (nuts and bolts of organizing a political campaign)

The Campaign Manager- by Catherine Shaw
How To Win a Local Election - by Judge Lawrence Gray
Winning Elections - by Faucheux
All's Fair - by Mary Maitlin and James Carville.
Enlightening blow-by-blow account of the 1992 Presidential campaign as told by both the Bush and Clinton camps.

How To Beat the Democrats (and other subversive ideas) - by David Horowitz (Good rhetoric to use in press releases and in speeches if you change 'Republican' to 'Libertarian.')

Sales Books:
Selling for Dummies -by Tom Hopkins
Prospecting for Dummies - by Tom Hopkins
Advanced Sales Strategies - by Brian Tracy
The 25 habits of Highly Successful Salespeople - by Steve Schiffman
Power Sales Presentations - by Steve Schiffman

Fundraising Books
Fundraising For Dummies - another yellow and black dummies book which is excellent.

If every LP activist would read one sales book and one
campaign book, we would be light-years ahead of where we are now. All of our decisions would be better - informed. Our public perception would be better. We all need to understand and appreciate that we are in the communications business.

Also cassette tapes and CDs are available by the same
authors. Brian Tracy- The Psychology of Selling is an
excellent two-tape program which will help you persuade people to join the LPPa or to accept L/libertarian platform positions.

I also recommend the Pioneer Valley Libertarian Association Candidate Support Disk. This is well worth the $5 suggested donation. There are also some good campaign manuals available online and in the LPPa archives.

Please give us any brochures, etc talking points that have proven useful.