Follow the Money: How George W. Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-Tied America

From the beginning, where Anderson announces that to understand present American politics, one must grasp that Texas is a third world country whose capitol is Houston, he grabs the reader's attention and doesn't let it go. (Not only is Texas a 'third world country,' but Bush et al. have tried to run the US the same way... and were successful for several years.) _Follow_ tracks several characters (DeLay, Bush, Abramoff) through a twisting maze of money laundering, fraud, and crooked politics. Much of the book focuses on the Delay/Abramoff scandal, though he outlines clear ties between Abramoff and Karl Rove. (eg. Rove's personal assistant is Abramoff's former personal assistant.) If you're not the sort of person who reads the news, this is not the book for you. If, on the other hand, you wish to know just how the American government was stolen by politicians more familiar with the Banana Republic known as Texas (and how it all fell apart...), buy this book.

"Follow the Money" begins in Houston, a city 62% minority, one of the most ozone-polluted areas in the country, and the largest city in the U.S. without zoning regulations. In 1994, top Texas officials were all Democrats, as was the majority of its House and Senate, and its Congressmen in Washington. The only exception was its two national Senators - both Republicans. George W. Bush won the Governor's seat in 1994, beating incumbent Ann Richards with 53% of the vote. (The author suspects that Rush Limbaugh's popularity in the state was a factor.) After a brief introduction to James Baker (major player in the Bush I administration, and architect of Bush II's Florida win), the scene shifts inexplicably to Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, and Karl Rove. It's on to Abramoff's first clients (Marianas Islands - fighting to retain their exemption from U.S. labor laws, and a Mississippi Indian tribe trying to prevent new competition in nearby Alabama), DeLay's creation of the K-Street Project and relief for corporations from taxation and regulation. Abramoff goes on to create a number of false front organizations to launder his fees and donations, double-cross one Indian tribe client (also worked for their competitor against them), made numerous contacts with Karl Rove and the White House (learned despite use of Republican National Committee e-mails to elude retention requirement), etc. A well-detailed and sordid history of recent American politics.

"Follow the Money" is, as John Anderson writes, a "first pass at history," an effort to chronicle a "vast web of intrigue." He might well have said a vast web of corruption, as intricate as a Mark Lombardi diagram, for that is the book's subject -- the barely concealed but highly complex efforts of Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, and a host of others, most with close ties to Texas, in their bald pursuit of money and power. Abramoff's story is particularly appalling -- for example, Anderson explains how Abramoff manipulated the anti-gambling Christian right in the service of his pro-gambling Native American clients who wished to crush competing tribes in nearby states, and then turned around to represent those same competing tribes in their efforts to legalize gambling -- but it is only one strand in Anderson's fascinating story. Anderson's account is thoroughly documented and fair minded, acknowledging honesty and integrity on either side of the aisle whenever it presents itself. Witness the examples of Paul O'Neill, James Comey, and even John Ashcroft, all of whom come out quite well in Anderson's account. Although George W. Bush is certainly an actor in this tale, his relative absence, compared to others, is telling in and of itself. Bush is not a prime mover in his own universe. That role falls to others, such as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove (yet another Texan). Anderson's story, exposing the naked power grab of the Republicans in Washington, D.C. (and particularly in Congress), as well as in Texas, is a shocker. We can only hope the Democrats in Congress, and perhaps soon the White House, do a better job.