Dana Milbank: Smashmouth: Two Years In The Gutter With Al Gore And George W. BushNotes From The 2000 Campaign Trail
No matter how many times Dana Milbank uses his pet word "smashmouth," it still sounds awkward and pretentious. But the real problem with his new book may be that he doesn't use it often enough. Purportedly a "treatise on political toilet humor," a book "to celebrate the virtues of good, solid, in-the-gutter campaigning," Smashmouth is nothing so cohesive. Instead, it's merely a recycled collection of two years' worth of Milbank's subject-hopping political reportage for The Washington Post and The New Republic. While Milbank prefaces the book with an intriguing theory—that negative, "smashmouth" politicking hones and focuses candidates and voters alike, and that no one really disapproves of it but the conflict-hungry media—he only rarely and briefly returns to that theme throughout nearly 400 pages of long-stale news, beginning with the earthshaking question (circa Fall '98) of whether Bill Bradley will decide to run for president. Milbank is a personable, clever writer who, in the best New Journalist style, frequently places himself at the center of his own coverage; at the same time, he creates intimate portraits of the candidates as substantive, incisive, and frequently as entertaining as they are informative. Like Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway's 1992 documentary Feed, Smashmouth invites political junkies to investigate the 2000 candidates and their coteries from behind the scenes, where they're caught off-camera, off-message, and off-balance, sometimes literally with their pants down. The informality occasionally crosses into bad taste, with one astonishingly grotesque piece casting George W. Bush as a sexual predator, for repeatedly "touching" Milbank "in an improper way" by shaking his hand, then failing to grant him an interview. But most of Smashmouth provides insightful, solid journalism with a creative twist. It just doesn't seem particularly relevant. While the segments detailing Bush's campaign-trail platitudes and promises will no doubt be crucial to left-wingers in the four years to come, segments mocking Alan Keyes' raving, Orrin Hatch's 0% poll ratings, and the step-by-step choreography of Elizabeth Dole's "informal" strolls seem far less essential. Milbank touches on any number of fascinating political themes: The underdeveloped pro-negativity motif is key, but the analysis of the media's parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the candidates is even more telling. An original book focusing on either of these positions, coming from Milbank, would have been fascinating. Instead, Smashmouth is mostly devoted to handicapping the horses long after the race has ended.