Home
Archive
Newsletters
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Enough with the '08 Presidential 'Buzz' Already

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted November 15, 2006.


With the '06 election barely in the rearview mirror, out comes the media's two-year long presidential campaign rumor and buzz industry.

Share and save this post:

      

      

Share on Facebook       

AlterNet Social Networks:
follow us on twitter
find us on Facebook

More stories by Matt Taibbi

Advertisement
Upcoming AlterNet stories on Digg

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Union Station, late Sunday evening. Arriving in town after a long train ride to do a post-election follow-up, I ducked into the men's room to wash my face before hailing a cab. As I propped my roller luggage against the tile wall and flicked on the faucet, I heard a voice -- to my surprise, since I'd thought the bathroom was empty.

"Hey," it said. "Hey, excuse me. I'm sorry. I know how this sounds, but do you have six dollars?"

I turned the faucet off and turned around. A dumpy-looking white man in a wrinkled pinstripe suit was standing with his hands clasped together outside the corner stall. His temples were moist and he had a lilac-colored tie with white flecks and a large coffee stain running down the middle yanked loose around his unbuttoned collar. Looking closer, I saw that there was a semi-coherently arranged pile of newspapers and brown bathroom paper towels on the stall floor; Mr. Pinstripe had apparently made a bed for the night.

"Six dollars?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "You see, my cousin was supposed to come with my train fare, but he didn't show up, and… well, I need to get to Trenton, and I'm six dollars short. If you give me your address, I can pay you--"

"What's your cousin's name?" I asked.

"My cousin?" he said. "Well, his name is, uh… his name is George. It's George. George Anderson."

"George Anderson, huh?" I said. "And what's your name?"

The man sighed. "Okay, buddy, look," he said. "I don't have a cousin. I just need some money. Can you give me six dollars or can't you?"

I frowned. "Wait a minute. Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Oh, God," the man in the suit said, shaking his head. "Yes, you might have seen me before."

"Hey, yeah," I said, snapping my fingers. "I saw you in USA Today, right?"

"Okay, you got me," he said. "I'm Tom Vilsack's buzz."

"Tom Vilsack? The Governor of Iowa?"

"Right."

"But you can't be Tom Vilsack," I said. "Tom Vilsack has no lips and a saggy neck and he looks like a roadie for a Lawrence Welk tribute band. But you're bald, for one thing, and--"

"No, no, you don't understand," the man snapped. "I'm not Tom Vilsack. I'm Tom Vilsack's buzz."

The bathroom was silent for a moment except for the dripping of the faucet.

"Impossible," I said finally. "Tom Vilsack has a buzz already? A 2008 buzz?"

"No, it's possible, believe me," the man said. "I'm him."

"But the midterm elections only ended like ten minutes ago!" I said. "Nobody can possibly have a buzz yet!"

"You couldn't be more wrong," he said, pulling out a wrinkled magazine from somewhere under his suit jacket. "Check out this week's Time. Here. Read the underlined section."

I took the magazine and read. "'Real Buzz Begins for Next White House Bids.'" I kept reading, then shook my head. "But this is all about McCain. Says he attended 346 events this year. Then there's a little bit about Biden, and Romney…"

"But it mentions Vilsack," the man said. "And here. Look, this is from the New York Post last week. Story's called ‘1st Up for '08 Gives Hill Fair Warning.’ Maggie Haberman says that announcing early 'generates some buzz' for Vilsack.' You hear that? I'm generated."

He held up the Post article, which was crudely ripped around the edges. I waved him off.

"I don't know," I said. "That doesn't mean anything. What does Joe Trippi say? You don't have a buzz without a Joe Trippi quote."

"Des Moines Register from the weekend," he said, clearing his throat and handing me the clip. He read: "'Joe Trippi, who managed Democrat Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, said Vilsack generates a good buzz when he travels around the country.'"

I examined the article closely.

"Wow," I said. "Vilsack does have a buzz. Goddamn."

"That's what I'm telling you," he said. "So can I have that six dollars?"

He wrung his hands nervously in front of him, then scratched his nose. I noticed that he had a sore on the back of his left hand, which also had a piece of dirty gauze around the thumb.

"Wait a second," I said. "If you're Tom Vilsack's buzz, then what the hell are you doing sleeping in Union Station on a Sunday night? What's going on here?"

"Oh," he said, eyes darting left and right. "I'm not sleeping here."

I stared at him. "Bullshit," I said.

"Okay, well, fine, I am sleeping here! Jesus, you're tough," he said. "But it's just tonight. I had a little problem."

"What kind of problem?" I asked.

"Well, here's what happened," he said. "I was up on New York Avenue with Irving Kristol last night. We were trying to buy a couple of gelcaps from this guy named Hi-Top, who Irving knew. This Hi-Top, he tells us to meet him behind a Burger King up there, we bring the money, and he shows up, and all three of us get jumped by Rudy Giuliani's and Barack Obama's buzzes, these two big motherfuckers in black leather jackets. They take the money and the drugs and then they run away towards the Baltimore-Washington parkway. Irving says he saw them get into a blue Pontiac under the freeway. So he goes back to his car and says he thinks he knows where he can find them, and he tells me to go back to Union Station, wait for him here. He's all showing me his gun and everything, says he's going to fix those guys good. That was last night. Anyway, he hasn't showed up yet."


Digg!    Share on facebook   submit to reddit    Bookmark on Delicious   Stumble This  

See more stories tagged with: election08, presidential

Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »

Advertisement
Advertisement

 

Comments Turn comments off sitewide Give us feedback »
Comments closed.
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.
View:
2008 Prez process
Posted by: dwort on Nov 16, 2006 1:44 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The only reason the buzz has started for 2008 is because the Repugs want to nominate the Democrat again. Remember, "John Kerry is the only Dem that can beat Bush". Now they're pushing HRC because they know she can't win either. You never hear someone like John Edwards mentioned, because he beat Kerry by 10 points in a CNN poll against Bush and the Repugs were scared to death we would nominate him.
Now they want to control our process again...I say, let's pick our own man this time, someone the Repugs are still afraid of...John Edwards!!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

buzzing
Posted by: rsaxto on Nov 17, 2006 1:42 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I always knew that Matt Taibbi's nonfiction pieces were FICTION! Now my head will be buzzing strangely for two more years.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Didn't we just HAVE an election?
Posted by: keefus55 on Nov 17, 2006 4:40 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It’s oft been said that we reap what we sow. The current American political system generates and then throws millions upon millions of dollars in “campaign donations” at candidates for high office. And then we wonder why all of them are corrupt!

I was recently back in my home state of New Hampshire and was amazed at how many Presidential “wanabees” are already wandering around back there, raising money and forming “exploratory committees” to see if there’s enough interest (spelled “money”) for them to actually run in the New Hampshire Primary. That primary is still almost a year and a half away. What’s more, the actual election is still TWO YEARS away. Yet, these clowns are ALREADY in “campaign mode” and running around with their hands out…. as they have been back there for OVER A YEAR now!

To me, there’s something inherently wrong with a system that, by default, requires candidates for high office to generate millions upon millions of dollars, either from their own pockets or from seemingly endless fund-raising campaigns, just to get a job that pays far less than the average corporate CEO. It also seems like our elected officials are in a perpetual campaign mode even before the day they first take office. And because they are perpetually campaigning, is it any wonder that campaign money (and the pursuit thereof) becomes “Job #1”?

I can’t help but compare and contrast such perpetual campaign foolishness with what our Canadian friends do come election time. There, once the sitting Prime Minister dissolves the Federal Parliament, the actual campaign to elect a new one seldom runs more than a month or so.

That is, in Canada, after a month or so of hard campaigning by the candidates, elections are held…and it’s OVER! Then, everyone goes back to work doing the government's business. What a concept!

And while there are four major political parties in Canada, by law, candidates from ALL minimally qualifying political parties must be listed on the ballot for each seat in Parliament. Noticeably absent is the two-party (not to mention totally corrupt) “duopoly” of colluding “Republicrats” deciding who can (or who can't) get on a ballot.

What’s more, the elections are predominantly federally funded and coordinated. So, once a political party selects their candidate to run for a seat in a particular district (they are called “ridings”) qualifying candidates who also meet a certain minimum popularity threshold (based on results from a previous election) get a specified pot of money from the government to campaign with. And while private donations are allowed, since the campaigns themselves are so short, the overriding need to continually raise millions and millions from private or corporate sources has been virtually eliminated from their system.

Needless to say, what’s also really nice about this approach is that Canadians aren’t also subjected to watching (or hearing) the same mud-slinging campaign ads over and over (ad nauseam) in media assaults that can sometimes last YEARS in contested States or districts in the United States.

Keeping things “short and simple” makes grass-roots campaigns the norm rather than the exception in Canada. And their system also insures that ordinary citizens of modest financial means can still be elected to serve in Government, even at the highest levels. I firmly believe a similar approach might also help keep a lot of the graft and corruption at all levels in our US Government to a bare minimum as well.

Sometimes, less really IS more.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» RE: Didn't we just HAVE an election? Posted by: Joshua Holland
I'm already sick of the buzz, too.
Posted by: YogiBear on Nov 17, 2006 5:19 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm also sick of the speculation about pending democratic congressional failures. I wish the news jackals would give them some breathing room. What are they, in Rove's pocket or something?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Horse Racing For Fun & Profit
Posted by: NoPCZone on Nov 17, 2006 7:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Every year, the political hacks and wonks lament how our process and it's news coverage has been reduced to a horse race. And every time a political race comes along they cover it like a horse race, discussing momentum and buzz instead of issues and policy. It's been going on for decades and shows no sign of changing.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Four more years . . . of Bush that is!
Posted by: MAD on Nov 17, 2006 8:04 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You guys better settle in and get comfy with the status quo, because at the rate things are going now you'll be living in a full blown fascist dictatorship headed by the de facto president GWB 'til 2012 and beyond. Given that most Americans will sit down and shut up when they are told, I find it exceedingly hard to believe that you'll kick up much of a fuss when "terrorist sympathisers" are rounded up and discretely tucked away in KBR "camps for the politically divergent". Let's face facts and drop this silly talk about impeachment shall we? Corporate America will never allow their golden boy to go down like that. He, along with Cheney, are the geese that lay the golden eggs for the likes of Halliburton, Exxon, Pfizer, etc. Remember this - impeaching Bush is tantamount to impeaching the true socio-economic elite, not only in the US but around the world.

You'll notice how Big Daddy & Co. stepped in to install one of their own if only to ensure the continuity of the Carlyle group and the heavy-hitting interests they represent. Again the American public thinks they can jump head first into a political game that has always been played so far above their heads that they can't even see the surface. To wit, '00 & '04 elections. Sure, you saw that the elections were stolen but what did you do about it? Absolutely nothing. So keep cheering for the "good guys" and continue believing that a ridiculous two-party system can actually affect any real change in the most ultra-corrupt political system that currently blights the earth.

What's so damn endearing about you guys is how you desperately cling to this Democratic fairytale - hope against hope. Forget actually creating viable, multiple parties or maybe even getting off your ever-fattening asses to do something proactive for a change. I forgot, Americans are strictly reactive, only taking action after the ball has been dropped. Oh well, better to eat Captain Crunch and watch trash tv while saving up to buy that shiny new Jet Ski!! Yeah!!! You go America. The world is no longer watching - they've long since given up hope.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

2008 Prez Process & Vilsack's Chances
Posted by: kam on Nov 17, 2006 8:07 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Vilsack? And his 'buzz'? MOST Iowans say 'HA!'

You mean the guy who the ultra-centrist Democratic Leadership Council GAVE their 'top job' TO this past year JUST so he WOULD run for prez?? Who they've been stroking and cuddling for exactly THIS "opportunity" to get him ego-crazed enough to become the PERFECT foil to be the whole REASON WHY Hillary won't have to win in Iowa, dontcha know?? OH, YEAH!

She CAN'T win here, after all, we ALL know that! SO what better 'cover' for HER than to have a 'favorite son' candidate running in the Iowa caucuses??!! Brilliant!

And the sad, pathetic thing about all this back-room finagling IS that poor, patsy Tom doesn't seem to even have a CLUE that he's being USED by the DLC/Clintons for this exact purpose!

After all, the DLC was virtually a wholly-designed subsidiary of the Clintons -- and Gore, too! -- to "bring" the Dems "over to" the "middle", that great, vast "center" of political ideology, that has done soooo many wonderful things for us lately.

Poor Tom.

What he really OUGHT to go do, and what he'll probably end up doing, is become chancellor at some nice elite liberal arts college somewhere.

But NOT 'President of the United States'.

NOPE. Nope, nope.

And don't forget! -- What HAS Vilsack actually ACCOMPLISHED in EIGHT YEARS as Iowa's guv, huh????

-- An enhanced, better-funded/staffed Dept. of Human Services, so there's never another 2-year-old-murdered-by-her-mother's-live-in-boyfriend case again (that was the reason for the Vilsack teary-eyed admission that he, too, had been raised in an abusive home, remember?) -- ??

-- A single-minded focus on ensuring that Iowa's groundwater, waterways, recreational areas, etc., were as free of the filth and pollution from farm chemicals and livestock as possible, instead of being the cesspools of crap that they are acknowledged to be -- ??

-- A committed effort to economically reinvigorate Iowa's rural communities and counties -- ??

-- A dedicated vision of expanding the state's potential for renewable fuels/energy/etc., inCLUSive of the necessary funding -- ??

The answers to ALL of the above, that COULD have been gubernatorial legislative initiatives and firm policy stances, are ALL the same -- Tom Vilsack did NONE of these things in the last EIGHT YEARS!!

As a matter of fact, he stood solidly WITH the Statehouse Dem leadership IN THE WAY of ALL of this stuff!

-- WHY has the Iowa Energy Center always had to BEG to get their limited budget requests met, huh? And WHY did it take the Energy Tax Credit 3 yrs. to get passed (leaving the biggest windfarm project in the U.S. to wait an extra year to break ground!) ?

-- WHY have genetically-modified crops completely taken over ALL aspects of agriculture in this state, to the detriment of any OTHER kinds of agriculture?

-- WHY have the giant livestock confinement operators been given carte blanche to run rampant over the best farmland on the face of the earth, with little regulatory controls over them?

-- WHY does the DHS have FEWER employees and bigger caseloads than ever before in history?

-- WHY does the Iowa Values Fund continually fund projects for big corporate 'gimme' projects, instead of the more rural-economy-oriented projects that might actually shore up Iowa's dieing small towns?

All the while as Vilsack flits around the country boasting of his "compelling personal story" in Big Ag's private jets.

You get the picture????

Vilsack -- HA!!!

He's a nice enough guy, but he's got no presidential potential, nada. 3rd or 4th in the '08 Iowa caucuses, tops.

'Buzz', indeed.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Hilarious article
Posted by: Boomerang on Nov 17, 2006 11:30 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is well written, insightful, and very funny. My hat is off to you, Matt. Just be sure to ignore all the annoying, off-topic, acerbic comments you'll get about 9/11. The tinfoil hat brigade just doesn't have enough to do nowadays.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» RE: Hilarious article Posted by: fifthworld
» RE: Hilarious article Posted by: Boomerang