Smashmouth: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and be Negative on the Campaign Trail Book

In Smashmouth, Washington Post political reporter Dana Milbank offers an amusing chronicle of the 2000 presidential race. His book is much closer in spirit to Trail Fever by Michael Lewis (a hilarious report from the 1996 campaign) than it is to one of the Making of the President books by T.H. White (which provided definite accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 races), which means it is often incredibly fun to read even if it isn't the defining book of the election and its meaning. Instead, Milbank focuses most of his effort on making fun of the candidates, expertly peeling off the layers of propaganda that mark any political spectacle. Here's his description of how Al Gore visits a Dairy Queen in Iowa: You direct your 29-vehicle motorcade--two armored limousines, six vans, seven sedans, a dozen motorcycles, an ambulance, and a helicopter--to take you to the Dairy Queen. All 85 members of your entourage, including a bomb-sniffing dog and the man who carries the codes to launch nuclear missiles, descend on the ice cream shop. Police stop traffic, and security agents scurry about, speaking into microphones in their sleeves. As four photographers vie for position, you stroll to the counter to order your Chocolate Rock. Then you sit down to eat the confection and pretend not to notice that everybody in the place is staring at you. Milbank, formerly a writer for The New Republic, occasionally flashes his biases (the GOP, he writes, is "a party often hijacked by harsh and selfish ideology"). For the most part, however, he lambastes the whole presidential selection process. He is often a participant in what he covers, as he doggedly tries to get an interview with Bush, sends a postcard to John McCain, and helps conduct a presidential poll. This allows him to make important observations that another approach might never uncover. Did you know, for instance, that it takes "6,000 calls to get 400 complete responses" for a daily tracking poll? Milbank focuses on the events leading up to the 2000 election, even though it's what happened afterward--Gore's challenge of the vote in Florida--that is most interesting and significant. Smashmouth nevertheless is great fun for readers who like a dose of laughter with their politics. --John J. Miller Read More