"Some of my best friends are consultants. They tend to be the most entertaining people in the political community: eccentric, fanatic, creative, violently verbal, often extremely funny - the sort of people who sat in the back of the room in high school and tossed spitballs at the future politicians sitting up front. But their impact on politics has been perverse. Rather than making the game more interesting, they have drained a good deal of the life from our democracy. They have become specialists in caution, literal reactionaries - they react to the results of their polling and focus groups, they fear anything they haven't tested." Joe Klein

Joe Klein's Politics Lost is a must read for news and political junkies, highly recommended, get Amazon info here