There are certain topics I ramble on about on my blog more than others, like movies, hikes, music and food. Two things I haven’t written a lot about are politics and books. That changes today.
As I was riding in a cab on the way to the airport about a month ago, I overheard an interview on NPR with Dan Balz, a writer with The Washington Post. Balz was discussing his new book, Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America. I just happened to be on the market for a new, interesting read, and because I like to dabble in and out of non-fiction, it sparked an interest. I downloaded this in-depth election examination and chewed through it in a couple weeks.
One of the things I love about reading on my Kindle Fire HD is that it gives me the ability to highlight key passages and take notes, which I can then go back and review. While reading Collision 2012, I captured dozens of interesting facts about our president, the pool of colorful Republican challengers in the 2012 election, and the evolving election process.
Here are ten of my favorite things I learned or was reminded of, reading this book, that you might equally enjoy, in no particular order:
- By the time Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012, his net worth was estimated at more than $200 million.
- Barack Obama almost always speaks, in formal and some informal settings, with the aid of a teleprompter.
- The Obama campaign employed hundreds of developers that spent a year building a software platform that compiled and integrated an unprecedented amount of data including voter lists, donor lists and volunteer lists. Eventually named Narwhal, this platform allowed for integration between a campaign online and a campaign on the ground, for the first time ever. (The Obama campaign built a second and equally impressive platform called Dashboard that allowed thousands of field organizers scattered around the country to communicate and share important information over the web.)
- Nancy Reagan lobbied Mitt Romney to run for president.
- Mitt Romney loves Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts.
- Republican nominee Newt Gingrich pledged at one point during the campaign that he would establish a permanent moon colony if he were elected president.
- When Mitt Romney formally announced Paul Ryan as his running mate on the deck of the USS Wisconsin, he introduced him as, “the next president of the United States.”
- When Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention, she was interrupted by applause almost 50 times in 23 minutes.
- Through savvier ad buying and negotiations, Obama paid significantly less for his ads than Romney. For an ad during the Emmy awards, Romney paid $3,600 and Obama paid $1,200.
- More than $2 billion was spent during the 2012 presidential election.
If you’ve got an interest in politics, elections or just well written non-fiction , I recommend this book.
