“HAYWIRE: A Chronology of the 2016 Presidential Contest”

By Meghan Rice

Staff Reporter

The 2016 Presidential Election is still a popular topic right now—especially for Professor and Chair of Government, Politics and Global Studies, Dr. Gary L. Rose, who just published his 12th book: “HAYWIRE: A Chronology of the 2016 Presidential Contest.”

“I wrote this book, along with my other books, because I want to expand the knowledge of my readers regarding American politics,” said Rose. “I firmly subscribe to the old adage that ‘knowledge is power.’ So, I wrote this book to help empower people.”

The process of writing the book was no easy task, especially when it turned out to be around 800 pages.

“The most difficult challenge was to make sure that the many journalistic reports that I used as sources were balanced and objective. In this age of hyper-partisanship, one has to be careful regarding media reports,” said Rose. “Many news sources have succumbed to partisan influence.”

However, Rose’s passion for American politics made writing his book a pleasurable experience.

“I particularly enjoyed covering the nominating contests within both parties, due to the emergence of Donald Trump within the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party,” said Rose. “Nobody saw any of this coming. The primaries and the caucus contest were so fascinating.”

Rose also had the assistance of Sacred Heart students senior Bridget Hughes and Josh Murphy to research for the book. According to the Sacred Heart website, Hughes and Murphy provided him with news articles, fed him valuable sources and updated him on polls and latest news.

Hughes helped Rose research as part of her work study job over the summer.

“I think the research side of this is really fun,” said Hughes. “It was certainly a fun year to follow such an unprecedented and unpredictable election.”

The most exciting part of the process for Hughes was the day after the election.

“I was super sleep deprived, because I did stay up to watch the results, but we came in the next morning and started going over all of this data explaining how on earth this incredibly unpredicted result happened,” said Hughes.

Rose doesn’t have any writing projects at this point in time, but he is currently doing book signings and guest lectures on the election. He wants to inform and educate his readers on the topic he cares so much about.

“I want my audience to realize that despite all of the polls and the predictions of ‘experts,’ that presidential politics is still a roller coaster affair, very unpredictable, and can yield stunning results,” said Rose. “Perhaps that’s the beauty of American presidential elections.”

“HAYWIRE: A Chronology of the 2016 Presidential Contest,” is available for purchase on Amazon.

About the author

Leave a Reply