Terrible title for a
great book. Trail
Fever ? Hardly.
Michael Lewis'
account of the 1996
Presidential campaign
is anything but
feverish. Bemused maybe. Hilarious,
unsettling, absurd even. But not feverish. In
the book, collected from the journal he kept
for the New Republic , Lewis takes the stance
of a detached, bewildered outsider, interested
less in who wins the race than why the
candidates run in the first place. "A serious
Presidential campaign is no place for anyone
who cares about anything," he writes, setting
the stage for the exit, one by one, of all the
candidates with conviction.
On the campaign trail, Lewis is helplessly
drawn to the also-rans, particularly the truly
hopeless ones. He's fascinated by their
oddness, their idiosyncrasies, the
hopes/dreams/delusions/Messianic complexes
that spur them to torture themselves and their
followers and to spend tens of millions of
other people's dollars. He is in awe of the
eloquent but perhaps unstable Christian
moralist Alan Keyes ("What he and his
followers want is not to be elected but to be
among the elect"); respects the unwavering
zeal of Pat Buchanan ("like all romantics, he
is more deeply attracted to failure than to
success"); and is fascinated by the quixotic
puzzle that is Ralph Nader ("The impulse to
suppress appetites and sympathies in the name
of principle is the mark of a radical").
But Lewis reserves his greatest affection --
what amounts to little short of an outright
endorsement, really -- for Morry Taylor, a tire
industry mogul who spent 6 or 7 million
dollars of his own money to throw his hat in
the ring. Because he speaks his mind and is
beholden to no one, Taylor (who insists on
calling himself "The Grizz") becomes the
book's most compelling character. Even after
Taylor withdraws from the race, Lewis finds
himself repeatedly abandoning the campaign
to find out what Morry's up to. Their
relationship, and Lewis' role as objective
recorder of events, etc., takes an odd turn
when Taylor, obligated to speak at a gathering
of manufacturing executives the same day he's
to have tests done on his liver, asks Lewis to
fill in for him and read his speech. In a
decision that illustrates how unconventional
Lewis' approach is to his job, Lewis flies to
Palm Springs and does it. "This is the natural
conclusion of politics; the follower seeks to
meld himself into the leader. When he appears
onstage or on television George
Stephanopoulos becomes Bill Clinton. I have
become Morry Taylor."
Written in diary form, Trail Fever is loosely
gathered but wonderfully observed. And
although Lewis is savvy and superficially
cynical, the great thing about seeing the
campaign through his eyes is how closely he
mirrors the American electorate in his aching
desire to believe -- in anything. And this is
why he's attracted to the outsiders. "The
Outsider is by nature indiscreet, unstable and
risk loving ... To succeed an Outsider must
grab for what he knows he cannot have. He'll
probably never get it, but he might knock it
loose so that someone else will, one day."
Word is that the original title of Lewis' book
was Losers , scrapped for marketing reasons
by the folks at Knopf. (No one wants to read
about losers, right?) Too bad, but also sort of
fitting: The title of a book about how the
selling of candidates strips them of their
integrity was watered down because it
wouldn't sell. Politics as usual, no? -- Salon
Despite the overstuffed subtitle, this book stands as the best tale of the 1996 Presidential campaign, partly because traditional inside-the-campaign stories often lack revelation and insight. Taking off from his New Republic dispatches, Lewis (Liar's Poker ) brings home the craziness, such as the New Hampshire primary, where every citizen "must be thoroughly sucked up to." He wrings telling insights about the campaign from excursions with Ralph Nader, who speaks of "active citizens" to a student audience, or when he recounts the only non-scripted speech at the Democratic convention, as Jesse Jackson reminded the audience of the "canyon of welfare and despair." Lewis covers his bases with Clinton and Dole, for example, wittily dissecting campaign conventions like the media visit to Dole's hometown of Russell, KS. But he closes with sobering thoughts on the banality of current media-driven campaigns: "You can't legislate more critical citizens or greater expectations. All you can do is howl and hope others will join in."
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Journalist Lewis's (Liar's Poker ) chronicle of the 1996 Presidential campaign examines the battle for the Republican Party nomination and the following general election. It differs from most campaign books in that its perspective is "from the bottom of the political food chain." Lewis argues that the leading candidates were so preoccupied with risk-avoidance that they failed to address important concerns of the electorate. This meant that to the extent such matters were addressed at all, it was by the lesser candidates. Therefore, Lewis devotes more attention to such minor Republican candidates as Alan Keyes and Morry Taylor and to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader than to Clinton and Dole. His book is not comprehensive, but it provides a frequently humorous and occasionally insightful look into contemporary electoral politics for lay readers. -- Thomas H. Ferrell, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Trail Fever unveils the pomposities and absurdities of spinning campaign life with wit and restraint, with a touch, in other words, that is all the more devastating for its lightness.
Hilarious, genuinely funny, and insightful, the work of a truly gifted writer, assuring Mr. Lewis well-deserved hegemony in the titanic struggle to capture the Clinton era.
Bestselling author Lewis (Liar's Poker , 1989) applies his sense of humor to a subject that really needs it: the 1996 Presidential campaign. To escape the boring but politically prudent staged events offered by the Clinton and Dole campaigns, Lewis focuses on the secondary players. This draws him to candidates like Morry Taylor, who responds to the challenge of hosting a reception at the Republican National Convention with a motorcycle rally featuring 7,000 Republicans on Harleys, and Alan Keyes, whose verbal virtuosity makes Lewis a (temporary) believer every time he speaks, despite suspicions that Keyes might have a screw loose somewhere. Among non-candidates there are the spin doctors and "rented strangers"professional campaign operativesas well as Senator John McCain, whose "alarming preference for the truth" so disorients Lewis that it becomes difficult for him to function as a journalist. Please note: The purpose here is not to explain why Dole lost and Clinton won. In an era where major American Presidential candidates are congenitally allergic to reality, taking them and their campaigns at face value reveals little. By setting aside the official stories concocted by rented strangers and disseminated by the mainstream press, yet avoiding the automatic cynicism of the professional critic, Lewis conveys a sense of what is really going on. His lack of enthusiasm for a campaign (Dole's) that "plans its trips to the bathroom four days before it goes" is easy to understand, regardless of one's politics, and his recognition that Americans' indifference to electoral politics is a sensible response to "this crap" is oddly optimistic: The people are sane evenif our leaders are not. Written with Hunter S. Thompson's eye for the revealing detail but without his self-indulgence, and with Mark Russell's facility with one-liners but without his superficiality, this is a book to be enjoyed.
"A fresh, hilarious must read... [Losers ] is a winner."- Time "Hilarious, genuinely funny, and insightful, the work of a truly gifted writer."- The Wall Street Journal "A great book... Hilarious, unsettling... [and] wonderfully observed."- Dave Eggers, Salon "Unveils the pomposities and absurdities of spinning campaign life with wit and restraint, with a touch, in other words, that is all the more devastating for its lightness."- Newsday