Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid, reprinted in 2007 as Politics Lost: From RFK to W: How Politicians Have Become Less Courageous and More Interested in Keeping Power than in Doing What's Right for America, is a 2006 book by journalist Joe Klein

Joe Klein

Joe Klein is a longtime Washington, D.C. and New York journalist and columnist, known for his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim...

 on the loss of spontaneity and authenticity in American politics

Politics of the United States

The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.The executive branch is headed by the President...

. The book begins by recounting Robert F. Kennedy's

Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...

 1968 speech on the assassination

Robert F. Kennedy's speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

A speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was given by New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy on April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kennedy was campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination...

 of Martin Luther King, which Klein says "marked the end of an era" before polling and consultants took over public life; he then covers all of the U.S. presidential elections

United States presidential election

Elections for President and Vice President of the United States are indirect elections in which voters cast ballots for a slate of electors of the U.S. Electoral College, who in turn directly elect the President and Vice President...

from 1976 to 2004.