“[W]hen modern advertising began, the big clients were just as interested in advancing a political agenda as a commercial one. Monopolies like Standard Oil and DuPont looked bad: they looked greedy and ruthless and, in the case of DuPont, which made munitions, sinister. They therefore hired advertising firms to sell the public on the idea of the large corporation, and, not incidentally, to advance pro-business legislation. It’s this kind of thing that [Upton] Sinclair was talking about when he said that American history was a battle between business and democracy, and, 'So far,' he wrote, 'Big Business has won every skirmish.'”

--Jill Lepore in her New Yorker article, “The Lie Factory: How politics became a business,” on the rise and ascendancy of Clem Whitaker, Leone Baxter and Campaigns, Inc. Much, much recommended.

Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker of Campaigns, Inc., the first big political consulting firm.