David Helfert

David Helfert

David Helfert is a professor of political and public affairs communication at Johns Hopkins and George Mason Universities in the Washington, DC area. He has also taught at American University and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. This follows a long career as a television news reporter, media writer-producer in more than 140 political campaigns, communications director in the Texas Legislature, in the Clinton Administration and for nearly 10 years in Congress. Dave wrote Unspinning: The Practice of Political Communication.

Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s US presidential campaign is a case study for political communications in a distracted age. It is also a cautionary tale about the unforeseen aftershocks of the social media revolution.

Political pathologists will be stirring through the ashes of the 2016 presidential election for years to come trying to understand exactly what happened. How did a candidate who disdained acquiring the requisite knowledge about national policy,...