cover image War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics

War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics

Eleanor Clift. Scribner Book Company, $24.5 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-684-80084-4

The authors are Washington insiders: Clift, contributing editor to Newsweek and a McLaughlin Group weekly TV panelist, and her husband, Brazaitis, Cleveland Plain Dealer Washington bureau chief. To illustrate how real power in Washington is wielded, they offer personal profiles, by turns trenchant and predictable, of eight powerful individuals. ""[Newt] Gingrich could not escape his past. The ruthless way that he had achieved his position would forever color the way he was perceived,"" they write of the House Speaker. ""A streak of anarchy runs through [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan's dark Irish soul. He wants to tear down everything he has built"" is their take on the Democratic senator from New York and former Senate Finance Committee chairman. Clinton's defeated health-care plan shadows the profiles of hospital industry lobbyist Michael Bromberg and independent insurance agents' lobbyist Paul Equale, who helped defeat the plan, and presidential pollster Stanley Greenberg, who urged the embattled White House to give up on health care and overhaul welfare instead. Also profiled are pollster Frank Luntz, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and ex-Democrat Sheila Burke, now Senator Bob Dole's chief of staff. An appendix details political action committee contributions to candidates and predicts that, with these committees shifting most of their support to Republicans, the Democrats will be hard-pressed to regain a majority. Photos. Author tour. (June)