Campaign Talk, Why Elections Are Good for Us by Roderick Hart
The Doris Graber Book Award. Best Book in Political Communication published in the last ten years

1948 through 1996 was an important era in our politics. Rod took the task of tracing our self understandings as candidates presented them to us while seeking our votes. How has our public discussion changed from Harry Trumam to Bill Clinton? How has the voice of citizens changed as we moved through this era in which we as a nation were finding a new place for ourselves in the world?

What Rod did was present us with a clear picture and understanding of the changes we lived for half a century.

What makes that particularly important, and makes it richly deserving this award, is that we are entering a new era of politics and communication. No longer would you look for the citizen voice in letters mediated by newspapers. For good or ill the voice of citizens and candidates are not mediated by the media as they were in the half century covered. And we also enter a new era in carving out a new place in the world.

It is important because it gives us a remarkably clear vision of what was. That is equally important for our understanding of how our future is different from the past. We have a clear marker of what was as we move to new.

It is remarkably well written. It is a joy to read.