Bob Bauer has been involved in many of the biggest political struggles in the five decades since the post-Watergate 1970s. He has been a leading legal adviser to the national Democratic Party and to its candidates on strategies for winning elections and protecting voting rights, and he has represented the party in national political conflicts and controversies. He was the chief counsel to both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns and was the President’s White House counsel. He was counsel to the Democratic Senate leader during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. He was a senior adviser to the Biden presidential campaign on voting rights and election protection, and on vice presidential selection, and his responsibilities included playing the role of Donald Trump in preparation for the general election debates. Bauer is also now on the faculty of the New York University School of Law, teaching political reform and the ethical challenges facing lawyers in public life. He coauthored with Jack Goldsmith After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.
Description
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1: First Words about a Life in Politics
Chapter 2: Getting into the Business
Chapter 3: Politics and the Warrior Mentality
Chapter 4: The Weapon of Political Power
Chapter 5: Lying, Manipulation, and Debates
Chapter 6: Money in Politics
Chapter 7: The Press
Chapter 8: Impeachment
Chapter 9: Representing Presidents
Chapter 10: Joe Biden’s 2020 Campaign
Chapter 11: On the Nature of Political Ethics
Chapter 12: Ethical Action in Politics
Last Words
Notes
Index
About the Author
Reviews
A man of the arena, Bob Bauer is remarkably candid about his own role in defining and in deploying the law of politics—or, sometimes, the politics of the law—in recent decades. In these pages he takes honest account of the conflicts and compromises of an inherently complex sphere of life.
— Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
There may be no lawyer in America today who has been more deeply involved than Bob Bauer in the major political controversies over many years. In this important memoir, Bauer takes us behind the scenes and into the rooms where some of the most consequential political battles played out. For that reason alone, his book makes for riveting reading. But more than that, Bauer takes a hard look at his own role in those events, asking whether he helped to strengthen democratic norms or whether he could have done more or better. Bauer’s introspective analysis is a call to each of us to ask the same hard question about the way we involve ourselves in today’s politics. Do we have the moral courage to become the type of person our politics needs at this moment of toxic polarization that threatens our democracy?
— Judge Thomas B. Griffith (ret.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (2005-2020)
Bob is one of the few people who has had a front seat to history through two Presidents and a first hand knowledge of the weight and responsibilities that sit on their shoulders. Through engaging storytelling and candor about his own experiences, Bob reminds us of the responsibility every public servant has to weigh ethics and morality in decision making not just in the age of Trump but well beyond.
— Jen Psaki, Former White House press secretary, Host of Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC