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A review by kurtpankau
Inside the Circus--Romney, Santorum and the GOP Race: Playbook 2012 (POLITICO Inside Election 2012) by Evan Thomas, Politico, Mike Allen
4.0
I love what Politico is doing with their coverage. Rather than a retrospective at the end of the election, they're releasing episodic mini-ebooks at regular intervals, meaning that I'm reading fresh political coverage in a book. A book! I would come across a retelling of something and realize that the event being described had only happened a month ago. Of course the real problem here is that INSIDE THE CIRCUS came out a week before Santorum dropped from the race, which would have given the narrative an effective close. But them's the breaks.
Picking up where THE RIGHT FIGHTS BACK left off, ItC tries to frame itself as a chronicle of Romney's quest to secure the nomination. It never really achieves that, so this book feels like a string of loosely-related reports rather than a cohesive political narrative (a Lord of the Rings metaphor evoked in the final pages felt particularly ham-fisted). That said, the reporting is wonderfully in-depth and info-taining. It's a campaign as bemoaned by campaign managers and GOP insiders. There is a little insight into the way Citizens United and Super PACs have changed the race--rather poignant if you've listened to This American Life's coverage of campaign finance--and a lot of insight into the candidates as human beings. We get to see Santorum as the quick-to-anger policy wonk. We see Romney as the almost-too-robotic family man who is trying not to repeat his father's campaign mistakes and is deeply, madly in love with his wife. And with Bachman and Cain out of the way, Gingrich's doughy buffoonery gets a chance to really shine.
For politics-as-process and current-events coverage without speculation or ever mentioning the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the issues being discussed, this is a great primer.
Picking up where THE RIGHT FIGHTS BACK left off, ItC tries to frame itself as a chronicle of Romney's quest to secure the nomination. It never really achieves that, so this book feels like a string of loosely-related reports rather than a cohesive political narrative (a Lord of the Rings metaphor evoked in the final pages felt particularly ham-fisted). That said, the reporting is wonderfully in-depth and info-taining. It's a campaign as bemoaned by campaign managers and GOP insiders. There is a little insight into the way Citizens United and Super PACs have changed the race--rather poignant if you've listened to This American Life's coverage of campaign finance--and a lot of insight into the candidates as human beings. We get to see Santorum as the quick-to-anger policy wonk. We see Romney as the almost-too-robotic family man who is trying not to repeat his father's campaign mistakes and is deeply, madly in love with his wife. And with Bachman and Cain out of the way, Gingrich's doughy buffoonery gets a chance to really shine.
For politics-as-process and current-events coverage without speculation or ever mentioning the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the issues being discussed, this is a great primer.