Now Playing at Reason.tv: Dirty Tricks as the Grand Tradition of American Politics, featuring Roger Stone

December 30, 2007

On November 28, reason sat down for a discussion with one of the masters of the dark arts of politics, Roger Stone. Many people in Washington, D.C. talk about "hardball politics," but no one has done so with as much skill, creativity, flair, and stomach-turning dedication as veteran political strategist and dirty tricks expert Roger Stone.

Beginning with his first disinformation campaign in grade school (ironically, aimed at his later idol, Richard Milhous Nixon), Stone learned the ropes as a teenager at Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (C.R.E.E.P.) and has spent the last 30 years in the political shadows, playing a major role in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" during the 2000 Florida recount and waging a highly public ongoing battle with Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-N.Y.). As a battle-hardened and scandal-heavy veteran of eight national presidential campaigns, Stone understands the skulduggery and strategems of the modern political campaign like no one else. That's one reason he was dubbed "a grotesque" by reason's Nick Gillespie in The Washington Post: Stone lays open all the grimy and gritty machinations through which politicians work the system--and voters--to gain power.

What he has to say will keep you on the edge of your seat--especially if you lay awake at night wondering how some of the bums that govern us manage to sneak into office in the first place.

To watch Stone's comments, just click on the image above or go here.