The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World

A HALF-CENTURY IN POLITICS

WAR STORIES AND WISDOM

During his more than 50 years in politics, Democratic strategist Douglas E. Schoen has produced nearly two dozen books that have deftly dissected national and international crises and offered prescriptions for solving them. Now, in The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World, Schoen delivers his most personal work. Bringing to life the antiwar youthquake of his Harvard years, Schoen introduces us to Cornel West, Walter Isaacson, Merrick Garland, and other classmates bound for glory. A tense summer in Mississippi helps Schoen appreciate the long game of candidate Charles Evers, a bootlegger-pimp turned civil rights crusader. In New York, he witnesses the twilight of clubhouse power as he canvasses for society swell Carter Burden, "mob priest" Louis Gigante, and Ed (How'm doin'?) Koch. Taking time out for his own run for Congress, Schoen joins data wunderkind Mark Penn in pioneering overnight polling - getting to know everyone from Camelot heir Ted Kennedy to crack-smoking mayor Marion Barry to a brash developer named Donald Trump. Penn & Schoen evolves into a global consultancy, taking on strongmen in Serbia, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Turkey, and Venezuela. Two of its clients are assassinated. Three win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1996, the duo guides beleaguered President Bill Clinton to a second term and through a wrenching sex scandal. Using a unique strategy for micro-targeting voters, the firm helps give Mayor Michael Bloomberg the time he needs to steer New York City to a recovery after 9/11.

Schoen seems to be on top of the world when a British multinational pays a fortune for Penn & Schoen. Out on his own, he shrugs off a new generation of progressives who mock his centrist views and his willingness to debate conservatives on Fox News. Gradually, he reinvents himself. He becomes a syndicated columnist, co-founds a new polling company, immerses himself in Ukraine's struggle against Russia, and saddles up again with Michael Bloomberg to help oust now-President Trump. Along the way, some former critics admit Schoen might have been right. Brimming with ripping yarns from campaign war rooms, The Politics of Life is also a manual for living a productive and happy life. Sprinkled through the memoir are the author's "Schoenisms" - lessons he's learned the hard way:
- It helps if your opinion is correct. But first, it should sound convincing.
- Take on a despot when he first threatens you. Bullies only get bigger.
- Martyrdom is overrated. Don't fall on any swords unless there's an ambulance on the way.
- Shaming and blaming your opponents might impress your allies. But it doesn't accomplish much - aside from chasing people away from the bargaining table.
- Don't waste time on feuds. Grudges sap your strength and hurt you almost as much as the person you're fighting.
- Most people are mixtures of light and darkness. Life is about learning the moral gradients - the grayscale - and deciding how much shadow you can live with.

"Wisdom can come from people you don't immediately recognize as wise," writes Schoen, whose unlikely teachers have ranged from a tenement house painter to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The essence of Schoen's koans is consensus. Though it's popular in business to talk about "eliminating the middleman," Schoen argues in The Politics of Life that "you need the middleman. And the middlewoman. You need the go-between, the tiebreaker, the conciliator."