Being a public figure is no walk in the park - the world focuses on every move that politicians make and highlights their every mistake. "Image collapse" can befall anyone whose carefully cultivated persona is pitted against intermediaries in the broadcast booths of cable news networks or behind the photo desks of newspapers, magazines, and today's host of digital platforms.
As a world-traveling "advance man," an operative who orchestrates TV- and photo-ready moments involving important political figures, Josh King has unique experience working with the reputations of officeholders, candidates and other public figures. In Off Script: An Advance Man's Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide, King leads readers through an entertaining and illuminating journey through the Hall of Infamy of some of the most catastrophic examples of political theater of the last quarter century. Readers might remember these cringe worthy moments as simple cases of bad luck. King argues, instead, that they were symptomatic of something larger: our broad appetite for public embarrassment, the media's business imperatives in satiating that craving, and the propensity of politicians to serve it up on a platter, often by pretending to be someone they're not while strutting on the public stage.
Josh King is host of the popular SiriusXM radio show PoliOptics and has served as Senior Vice President of Penn Schoen Berland, the global polling and strategic communications firm. Prior to Penn Schoen Berland, he was Vice President, Media and Community Relations, for The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., one of the nation's oldest and largest insurance companies. His articles have appeared in Men's Vogue, Variety, the Washington Post, and Brill's Content, and he has appeared on the BBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, National Public Radio and XM Sirius Satellite Radio. King lives in New York City.