Al Franken's new book The Truth (with Jokes), takes readers back to a period in recent history that most of the author's fans would probably like to forget-the 2004 (re)election of George W. Bush. In the months leading up to November 2004, Franken, was one of the most vocal of the liberal talking heads and organizations fighting to get voters out to the polls, stressing the importance of a Democratic victory. And in case anybody's forgotten, let's just refresh our memories of the state of affairs leading up to that fateful day in November: flip-flopper, swift boat, Zell Miller, "I voted for it before I voted against it," ketchup money versus oil money, old money versus old money posing as blue collar. There it is: Election 2004; a must-win for the Democrats. But win they did not. And when Bush was elected for a second term (and won for real this time) it was certainly a blow to the Democratic and liberal communities. What exactly happened? How did someone, so seemingly incompetent and just plain bad for the country pull it off-again! And this time without the help of his friends in black robes. Franken looks at all these things and decides that there were three things that turned the tables for Bush: Fear, Smear, and Queers.
At this point, most readers probably already have an opinion on Franken, and The Truth is loaded with the kind of snarkiness that his detractors loathe, as much as it is filled with the biting humor that makes him so popular among his fans, and Franken is unlikely to win or lose many converts with The Truth. However, if you're just crawling out from under Iraq, I'll lay it out flat for you: If you're the kind of person who likes to see conservative blowhards (media and politicians alike) get force fed some of their own medicine, you'll probably like Franken. If you like smart, witty, left-leaning politics, again, Al's your man. However if you summer in the No-Spin Zone or have a time-share in Scarborough Country, Franken probably won't convince you to move any time soon (though, I do owe you a good-sport handshake for even reading this review).
So let's start with Fear, which, as Franken lays out, is really what won Bush the job. In Franken's words, terror--or more appropriately the mentioning of "terror"--was Bush's "little black dress." Whenever an impression needed to be made, Bush and his spokespeople pulled their terror dresses out of the closet and paraded around in them until we were appropriately, well, terrified. This was never clearer than at the Republican National Convention when speakers from Rudolph Giuliani to John McCain to Zell Miller (who's profiled in a chapter called "With Friends Like Zell" detailing his historical backstab of former friend John Kerry) to Bush himself gave the convention a unifying theme: We have everything to fear, especially fear itself. And not only did the Republicans succeed in terrifying us, but they also reiterated the bogus connection between 9/11 and Iraq, in an attempt to justify the then-and-still disastrous war. When compared with the up-with-people stylings of the Democratic convention, the Republican Convention just struck a stronger chord with swing voters.
But fear wasn't quite enough to win Bush the election. His opponent was someone who knew a thing or two about fear himself. As a decorated Vietnam War veteran, one of the key elements of the Kerry campaign was to play up their candidate's military record, especially his valor and courage during another troubled time. But the Bush team was famous for its hatchet job campaigning and had more than a little experience taking on decorated war veterans (just ask the apparently extremely forgiving John McCain, whom Bush's campaign relentlessly lied about in the 2000 election). And the news media would do their part, too, giving hours and hours of airtime to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose unsubstantiated and thoroughly debunked smear of Kerry's war record became the most talked about nonissue of the election. As Franken notes, "What should have been Kerry's greatest strength became a defining liability." And Bush, who stayed home during the Vietnam War (along with Franken who is more than happy to flaunt his civilian war record) became the more heroic, patriotic, and, indeed, manly candidate (claims more laughably enhanced than the flightsuit codpiece Bush war in his famous end of major combat in Iraq speech).
