Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad
Tackling everything from empty campaign rituals and deceptive TV ads to misleading polls and shallow news coverage, rotund political pundit Germond (Fat Man in a Middle Seat) holds forth on political ills. Drawing on 50 years in Washington, he traces a pattern of decline in substance, civility and integrity among politicians and those who write about them, and spares no one, including voters. Most of Germond's observations are conventional: diatribes against slanted polling techniques, campaign coverage driven by sound bites, media feeding frenzies in response to minor gaffes by politicians, and the overweening power of money to influence elections. But Germond buttresses his arguments with a rich trove of anecdotes, the best of which are drawn from his reporting experiences, as when vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen's wife called Germond to complain that a pointed question as to whether Bentsen owned a foreign car "had cost me my Mercedes." Germond is especially caustic about the issue of race, on which he faults both parties for evasion and dishonesty. He devotes a few pages to possible remedies, such as rescheduling the presidential primary races to provide more time for reflection by the voters, but frankly concludes that none of his ideas is likely to be enacted. The book thus ends up less a cri de coeur than an agitated shrug.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.