It was a surprise to almost everyone when John Kerry lost out to Bush in the 2004 presidential elections, considering how unpopular everyone thought he was. Hunter S. had placed his bets on Kerry, and who wouldn’t? Even Eminem had a cool V for Vendetta style video about how important it was to vote Kerry. To all rational minds, Bush was the archetypical clown/villain, and yet, he beat Kerry, against all expectations.

Understanding why that happened is what this book is all about, an exposé on the farcical nature of America’s image driven politics, a blow-by-blow account that essentially says the same thing that RATM’s Testify video did. It’s the picture of a war-mongering mercantile society where its media relentlessly promotes a false consciousness on the public so as to give them the illusion of choice.

Taibbi’s ire is more often that not directed at fellow journalists, who are just as complicit in selling this made-for-TV drama. Journalists on the campaign trail come across as popularity seeking herd animals, whose access to the presidential candidate is determined by unwritten code as cruel as a high-school popularity contest. Taibbi describes how he’d been blackballed for access to Howard Dean for three whole days by fellow reporters who ask inane questions such as:

“Governor, getting back to substance, is it true that you paint your own house?”

“Do you use a brush or a roller?”

Taibbi takes his revenge on these pandering hucksters with Wimblehack! An elimination style hack tournament for the title of Worst Campaign Journalist in America. This was a vintage Matt Taibbi import from his days at Moscow’s alt-newpaper Exile, when they pied the previous year’s winner, Michael Wines from NY Times with horse sperm. Technology plays a big role in the style of Taibbi’s writing, as he can plug phrases like “Bush’s Genius” into Yahoo News and get an alert whenever a journalist uses it. It’s easy to do, but it takes balls to abandon all professional courtesy and attack fellow tradesmen.

This book is a collection of articles Taibbi wrote previously for New York Press, Rolling Stone, and The Beast, and you can read most of them online. The first article, in which can be found here again reflects Taibbi’s rage at shoddy reporting standards set by his colleagues. In an anti-war march in Feb 2003, which by his accounts tallied at 300,000 people, is reported as 30,000 by Fox News, Associated Press, and New York Times. Here’s how Taibbi describes the same scene: 

“From where I sat, there was no question that there were at least 200,000 people present, and probably closer to 300,000. The extraordinary turnout was the chief topic of conversation along the march: time after time, I spotted marchers turning to look back, shaking their heads at the trailing crowd, and saying, "Holy Shit!" Walking in a gathering this size, you get a sense of its building kinetic energy and potential destructive power a chain-link fence near the mall that obstructed a group of short-cut seekers, for instance, simply blew away like dandelion fuzz once the crowd decided to walk through it.”

After growing disenchanted and weary of the Democrat runners, especially Kerry, whose keyword optimized acceptance speech is demolished in this piece, he goes undercover to volunteer as a Bush campaigner to gain a better understanding of the Republican mind. There are brilliant insights to be gained off this venture; it’s one of the few pieces that you won’t find online.

This book is part Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and part Boys on the Bus, seminal books that chronicled Nixon’s win in 1972. He’s funny as hell, which is all that makes his bleak account of campaign politics bearable.