What is the truth about politics in the United States? What can you do to make it better? Read this book and find out.
Terri McCormick did what few politicians do. She wrote this a book to tell the truth and offer positive fixes for a broken system. There are many politician-written books on the market. Hers is different. She does not glorify her service, make excuses for mistakes, or promote a one-sided ideology. She gives you the true inside picture of state and federal legislative politics. This book will speak to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and true independents. Terri shares the unadorned truth with her readers.
Her writing is fair and balanced, but her most significant contribution is that she takes you from ‘ain’t it awful’ to telling you what you can do to fix the system. Terri’s subtitle is an excellent and honest summary of the contents of her book. It is; Stories from the Front Lines in American Politics and How You Can Change the Way Things Are. Terri’s credentials, experience, and track record makes her writing resonate with the truths she spells out.
She went into state and federal elected politics with a pure heart and didn’t sell out. This book is not an investigative reporter’s viewpoint, but is based on her deep immersion in the heart of the American political system. Most clear thinkers recognize our system is suffering from corruption, narcissism, selling out to special interests, ideology-at-all-costs, and loss of integrity that is rampant.
Yet Terri maintained her integrity, honesty, and shares the truth with us in What Sex Is A Republican? This book is a rare, important, and valuable addition to the national conversation about saving the United States—or losing it as we know it.
Here is what she wrote in her introductory Purpose:
“Do not be bamboozled into thinking that there is any difference between the elites in one political party and the elites in the other; they are all a part of the same club.
What Sex is a Republican? takes on the political class and provides
us with the tools to change the way things are. Just when you thought
it was all about elephants and donkeys, in walks the political class. Will
the political class continue to con America? Or won’t they?
It is all up to you!”
This book is different. There are many books about politics and by politicians. Bur, few are as honest and hard-hitting. Fewer yet that offer answers to fixing the problem.
Terri is a Republican, but she takes on all comers…no matter what party. She is not your typical politician; Terri is an American first. She tells you what is wrong with the system, what happens to most politicians when they are immersed in the system, and she tells you why.
Terri tells her story in three parts. In “Part One: A Call to Service for Each of Us,” she tells of the personal events in her life that led her to public service. She shares stories from her life that lead to supporting quality candidates, becoming an informed citizen, and getting involved in public service.
As a state legislator, she learned quickly, became successful, and faced hostility from her own political party leaders. Machiavellian antics lead to tensions between her and the GOP leadership. She saw how out of touch party bosses were with the people they were sent to serve. She confirms what you probably suspect.
To make sense of the political system, she takes readers beyond political party and ideology and reveals a political Ponzi scheme. She exposes the culture of the needy and the greedy in politics for what they are—an eco-system filled with political animals. If you are an insider and are willing to pay, you are allowed to play. She shows how the elite in both political parties act against their own back rows.
Terry moves beyond the stereotypes of ethnicity and gender and defines dysfunctional leadership in a flawed pay-for-play system. She exposes cronyism and political favors that monopolize the legislative agenda of the people’s house. You’ll learn that the only way out of institutional corruption is to start over. She proposes a new “We the People” that calls for new leadership willing put the people’s house right again. Changing political parties only changes the team’s jerseys. Without real change the same institutional games will go on.
In “Part Two: The Art of Political Power Games in a Vertical Silo,” she takes us inside the belly of the political beast. You get a front row seat that few get to see. You learn how seating assignments are used to control behavior by front-row elites. Then she shows how political reform can be done. Did you know the phrase “tipping the front row” was coined to show how to put front-row politicians into the backseat at the will of the people? It’s a powerful tool we can use. Terri used the Veterans Property Tax Bill to create a competitive prescription cost pool to prove her point. The “We the People” tool doesn’t sit in the front row of state and federal legislatures. Their power is used when they walk into the voting booths back home.
Terri shows you what public service for the people versus political self-service look like when you compare them with modern-day politics and medieval Machiavellian fear techniques.
She asks, “What are today’s results and impact of the do-nothing Congress that has prevailed over the last ten years?”
Her answer, “An economy in distress, needing a trillion-dollar bailout; Wall Street greed and corruption fueled by an ineffective Federal Election Commission; and job loss that rivals the Great Depression.”
She teaches you techniques that address the answers and they are just the start of fixing the system. Her answers show citizen leaders and legislators alike what an effective government office should look like.
Terri tells of the dark side of politics with a humorous twist in an unrelenting unveiling of dirty tricks and election engineering schemes. She tells of negative campaign smears to elitist tricks for controlling the vote. You’ll see the tricks of the trade in American politics.
She compares old-style politics to change leaders’ tools for you so you can make a more informed choice in the voting booth. She explains how to become an active citizen leader.
The power and difference in Terri’s book is in “Part Three: Changing the Way Things Are.” She explains how the greatest measure of how a public servant will act in office is shown in how he or she runs a political campaign. She tells you how much money a candidate may need in public office and relates that to the strategies and techniques used to run a political campaign.
As her reader, you get the tools you need to assist in building a framework for supporting a political candidate—or being one. No matter what your political or governmental desires are, she teaches that as an active citizen and educated voter, you can be an essential part of fixing our republican form of government. You can become a critical voice with influence.
Terri gives you public policy outlines that offer voters and candidates with integrity a reliable map to chart your course in public service. She’ll show you successful strategies have proven to be effective.
She makes the case that anyone can serve in public office, if only he or she has a plan and the heart to do so.
This book concludes with the “mask of virtue.” It is Senate Bill 1—and it promises a more effective and ethical government. It has stalled once more with immediate tragic consequences. Terri appeals to her readers, the American voter, and citizen leaders who, collectively, have the power to do so to bring political virtue through active citizenship. She encourages voters, as campaign volunteers and educated consumers of good government, to realize that there is no other option.
Active involvement in the political process is our only path to integrity, principled representation, and honest self-government.
Terri concludes with these admonitions: Integrity in leadership requires that the American public awakes up and gets involved. Deception and corruption occurs in political parties so courageous leaders need courageous individuals to stand with them.
She asks us all to get involved in our local political process and government. The current crowd is made up mostly of those who mastered dirty tricks and retail politics. It is up to all of us to change the way things are.
Terri sums it up with a founding father’s quote:
The Danger that political factions and political interests pose to the American people is so grave that it requires the passage of the United States Constitution to protect them.
—James Madison, The Federalist Papers: No. 10
If you care about the future of the United States of America you will buy this book, learn from Terri, and act on what you learn.
Review by Vern Westgate