A Successful Book & A Failed Political Campaign

In his famous 1934 campaign for the governorship of California, the author and activist Upton Sinclair took an unusual step. Before the election, he published a short book titled I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty, in which he outlined, in the past tense, the brilliant policies he had enacted as governor . . . the office he had not yet won. 

It was an untraditional move from an untraditional campaign, intended to leverage Sinclair’s…