Product Description

Why don't we like politicians? In "The Political Animal", Jeremy Paxman takes a look at why governments and politicians so often fail to live up to expectations. It can be an unforgiving business for MPs - caricatured as either power-hungry hypocrites or hopeless idealists - years of effort can lead only to defeat, disgrace or obscurity. What sort of person likes having his or her business or family affairs all over the news, or mistakes trumpeted and triumphs belittled? What drives people to go into it - and what do they get from it all? Jeremy Paxman sets out to explore this strange world - and on the way gives us an unsparing, but essentially sympathetic portrait of modern politicians.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243246 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Jeremy Paxman is a journalist, best known for his work presenting Newsnight and University Challenge. His books include Friends In High Places and The English. He lives in Oxfordshire.

Customer Reviews

Naked ambition
Why do we have such high expectations of politicians as a class yet such low expectations of the individuals? We enjoy the small change of political scandal – the revelations of unorthodox private lives or unsavoury business practice, while at the same time tuttutting that politicians are just as stupid, venal and corrupt as any of us. Paxman’s book makes an important contribution to a debate that’s just gaining currency – how can we re-engage people with politics when the so-called Westminster Village – parliament and the media circus that surrounds it – seems so self obsessed and distant from everyday life. His thesis is that this is essential, if civil society is to be maintained, and argues that our double standards do ourselves a disservice – politicians in the UK at least are less corrupt and sleazy than we might think, and certainly less so than in many other European democracies. But his main point is that politicians won’t exactly make this easy – for they’re a decidedly odd lot, an extension I suppose of the old adage that anyone who wants the job probably is unsuited to it by that very desire. In an episodic look at the politician’s life – the early years as a hack, candidacy, and the new MP through to the close of political life whether by election defeat, resignation or retirement – he aims to uncover just what it is that makes them tick. Paxman’s approach will be familiar to Newsnight viewers and here, he’s on home turf – feline, deceptively humorous yet with a menacing undercurrent. If you like his style you’ll find parts of The Political Animal laugh out loud funny, the odd irritating factual error notwithstanding - and not only for his Jeffrey Archer gags.

Good fun read, but lacking insight
Well written and engaging but ultimately not as insightful as you might hope. For anyone interested in politics and the political process Paxman's latest is an entertaining source of anecdotes and a useful introduction to the way democratic politics has developed in Britain. Despite this the book always feels a bit limited and falls down on two fronts. Firstly, the existence of other, better books on this subject (e.g. Gerald Kaufman's "How to be a Minister", Andrew Rawnsley's "Servants of the People"). Secondly (and possibly this is just me) the expectation that a commentator of Paxman's stature might have just a few more new ideas to throw into the melting pot. Ultimately an enjoyable read, just don't expect a great deal more.

GRAND INQUISITOR
There are very few slouches, if any, among the political interviewers that I have seen in Britain and the USA. Paxman is not perfect by any means, but I have never quite seen his equal. He has two besetting sins. One is in overdoing questions of the 'Why are you beating your wife?' variety and the other is a propensity to naff debating points, trying to manoeuvre ministers who admit to the slightest change of mind into saying that they should be considering resignation on that account. He is quick-witted, forceful and tenacious, and he is guiltless of the mindset known in America as 'respect', something that can disconcert his American interviewees who consider respect to be their right.

The tone he adopts in this book does not surprise me, but it may have surprised some of his victims. It is analytic, the wit and perception is often acerbic, but in general it is far from unsympathetic to politicians. Paxman muses on what the job is, what it is perceived to be both by those who do it and by the general public, and what persuades people to go in for it. He sees the whole political circus as a combination of the inspiring and the demeaning, its actors a combination of the powerful and the completely futile, helpless, naïve and manipulated. He does not spare individuals, and even American readers ought to be entertained by the part about the ludicrous Sir Gerald Nabarro, whom older British citizens will wince to recall and who would have been thought highly improbable if he had been a character in fiction. He has no strong political convictions of his own so far as I can see, and he is candid about any he ever did have. Like myself, he joined the Labour society at university not through any great belief in Labour but because he could not even stomach the alternative. He feels some obvious nostalgia for the days when there was a clear philosophical divide and not just a choice of managements, as when Clement Attlee's post-war government aspired to 'the socialist commonwealth of Britain', but he is not so simple-minded as to suppose that any such clear ideological choice is possible without disastrous results these days. How much, or rather how little, really depends on ideology as opposed to perceptions, outside influences, individual decisions and particularly individual mistakes, sheer luck and above all what Macmillan called 'events, dear boy, events' is something on which I find him particularly clear-headed and illuminating.

He writes in much the way he talks. That suits me in general, except to say that he is prone to giving too many instances. On air these come over very effectively as pungent asides, in print they tend to dilute the thrust of his argument which is somewhat discursive anyway. This is good-quality journalese, the work of a thoughtful, intelligent and battle-experienced professional, and I found it a very easy and agreeable read. As a writer he is no Muggeridge, but as a thinker he is less egocentric and much fairer-minded. He is witty and entertaining, but in fact the funniest thing is not in the text of the book at all, but the last two quotes from reviews on the back page, and I'm sure he picked those, or at least approved them, himself. He would not, I'm sure, expect me to award him 5 stars, and consequently I have not done so.