Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process

I am a huge fan of Stephen Elliott's fiction; HAPPY BABY was one of the best novels of 2004. So I was excited to read this and I wasn't disappointed. It's a superb and hilarious account of Elliott's year on the campaign trail, and you don't have to be a politics junkie (I'm certainly not) to find it absolutely charming as well as remarkably insightful and smart about various aspects of American political culture. It's a classic!

This book is a rare treat, a double-secret insider crawl through the wasteland of the presidential election season. Elliott shows us stuff no one else does, from up-close views of the most accomplished paid spokesliars, to the real reasons Kerry won the nomination. Along the way, he steers us, careening, through alternate realities, dozens of funny Eggers-style footnotes, drugs, and compulsive gambling. I'm not on the same end of the political spectrum as Elliott, but I still enjoyed this book's insights. What I didn't enjoy was the sloppy editing, no doubt resulting from Picador rushing the book out the door in two and a half months. (See misspellings of "Mineta", "signal corps", even the arcade game Pole Position, thought the last is at least understandable.) Elliott has some great analysis of the PA senatorial race, the youth vote, and more, but shows a strangely innocent naivete on occasion. A few cases in point: 1) He repeatedly calls Bush a liar, without ever specifically naming the lie. Perhaps he means the lack of Iraqi WMDs? But every intelligence agency in the world unanimously believed Iraq had WMDs, meaning Bush was mistaken, not intentionally lying. Sloppy. 2) He shows a fundamental ignorance of how the free market works by not understanding why rents go down when property taxes are cut. 3) He incorrectly states that the NORC analysis showed Gore should have won Florida if all votes were counted, under any standard. Actually, Bush would have won under certain standards where all 3 ballot viewers had to agree on voter intent. At least he correctly lets the Supreme Court off the hook, something many Democrats will never do. 4) He really, really wants universal health insurance, to the point where he says silly things like "Switching to a public system would save a whopping 10 percent in administrative costs, more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage." Uh huh. All in all, lots of fun, whether you are a Bush-hating liberal, or just a conservative looking for a tasty bit of schadenfreude.

. . . because Stephen Elliott has written our new campaign classic. Now, I'm not saying this book isn't full of insight into the theatricality of the political process, or the sycophantic relationship between the mainstream press and the two major parties, or the silliness of the sound byte culture. It is. I promise. It's all there. But what makes this book sing is the digressions, sometimes personal, sometimes fictional, sometimes incomplete, sometimes written in the first, second, or third person, sometimes funny, sometimes quite sad, sometimes involving sadomasochism, sometimes involving nonsexual love affairs with fellow travelers. The real protagonist of Looking Forward to It is not John Kerry or Howard Dean or George W. Bush. The real character, the real hero, is Stephen Elliott. And thank God for that. Okay, that's all. I'm not giving anything else away. Buy this book. Buy it, buy it, buy it!

Stephen Elliot's book is far and away the funniest and most insightful political punditry from the 2004 election. From the rise and fall of Howard Dean to the Republican convention in New York, Elliot doggedly pursues value in stories most reporters don't even recognize. As he crosses the lower 48 by bus, plane and thumb, we are introduced to some of the wisest, most astute political analysts grassroots America has yet uncovered. I loved this book for the sound byte it isn't.