Customer Reviews

Down and Dirty : The Plot to Steal the Presidency

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Jake Tapper has very little nice to say about either side in the farce that was the 2000 Florida election. He's obviously turned off by GWB and I get the feeling he really doesn't like Gore. But he does take some time to document both honest Repubs and honest Dems (believe it or not there are some) at the county-government levels of the election machinery. Reading this, I feel mostly for those isolated individuals that were mostly concerned with doing the right thing, and ended up screwed no matter what they did. There is a lot of text in this book that says what the players are thinking (as opposed to doing) which gets you closer to the characters but seems out of place in journalism.

Tapper documents perdify, misadventure, and out-and-out stupidity on all THREE sides: Dems, Repubs, and the media. For whatever reason the media clearly ended up influencing the events in favor of the Republicans, and had they not the result might have been quite different.

The fact is that the GOP simply out-manuvered the Dems all though the campaign, and right through the post-election mess. If you want to see how they did it, this book is a good view into it. A must-read for anyone to be informed on contemporary politics.

Jake Tapper takes the reader behind the scenes to reveal Election 2000's dirtiest secrets. "Down and Dirty" personalizes the Florida showdown, showing the worst of both sides in a way that should scare the American people into taking more responsibility for choosing our elected leaders. Tapper exposes Jeb Bush's intricate formula for dominating the Florida Republican party, in which he left few fingerprints behind while helping to ultimately deliver a Bush win in the "Jeberglades" and ensure his brother's victory. He illustrates the desperation of the Gore team, when they finally realized their legal argument was fundamentally flawed. From Gore calling top TV producers to sell his own conspiracy theory to a top Gore aide spreading salacious rumors about Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, Tapper lets exposes the dirty tricks in politics that no one likes to talk about.

Like no other election book on the market, Tapper personalizes the Florida drama, introducing us to the players with all of their human flaws and insecurities. Most important, he shows us how a single person can impact a nation.

With the same chatty, irreverent tone that singled out his election coverage on Salon.com, Tapper hones in on the greatest evil of modern politics -- a voting public that just doesn't give a damn. "Down and Dirty" shows the American people that they need to wake up and pay attention to who their leaders are. Shouldn't we expect more from our politicians than legal antics and dirty tricks?

"Down and Dirty" is a fantastic book on the chaotic, raucous post-presidential election scramble in Florida. Tapper uses his sharp political skills to weed through the boring election crap and create a very readable, funny behind-the-scenes account of the Bush and Gore camps yelling, screaming and plotting against each other. The hardball tactics used by each side to claim the White House sheds light on both candidates, their duplicity and motives. Nowhere else will you find such a candid portrayal of our current president, George W., and his nemisis, Al Gore, as they get 'down and dirty' in the fight for their political lives. In addition, Tapper's descriptions of the canvassing boards and the confusion that consumes the local yokles as they muddle through dimpled, pregnant and hanging chads is written with exacting wit and wry humor. The author strips away the varnish and veneer found in other stodgy accounts written by teams of reporters and tells it like it is. If you read only one book on the post-election Florida mess, this is it.

As a Texan and a Bush supporter my initial perception of the fiasco in Florida was a simple view of good guys vs. bad guys, of right vs. wrong. As with so many things in life the truth appears to lie somewhere in between. Jake Tapper's Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency provides the conservative and liberal alike with a different perspective on the events in Florida. It is an on the ground contemporaneous recollection of events as they transpired colored with Mr. Tapper's cynical perspective and interesting sense of humor. I am very glad I read this book. If anything it has caused me to think.

In Jake Tapper's world there is little room for principle. We are informed through the recounted words and actions of virtually all of the major and minor players that the goal of BOTH sides in this battle was to win at virtually any cost. From the canvassing boards to the Florida legislature, from Tallahassee to Maimi, Jake Tapper is a fly on the wall buzzing about reminding us that everything we see and hear is not as we might believe.

The Republicans in Florida have their ox to gore while the Democrats are beating the bushes of south Florida for as many Gore votes as they can find or invent, all the while assuring us that "EVERY vote should count." In Down and Dirty, Jake Tapper paints a thought provoking picture of both sides engaged in a series of cynically coordinated and planned actions designed solely to assure that their candidate prevails. Whether it is talking points prepared by paid consultants, the Miami Dade Republican mob in loafers and polo shirts or Jesse Jackson whipping up the voters of Volusia, so many of these events are planned not to right a wrong but to manipulate public perceptions and to create just the right public response. At first I found myself frustrated with what I perceived to be an anti-Bush bias in the book, however as I continued to read the book, in fairness to Jake Tapper, he body slams both sides with almost equal vigor. As I turned the final page I found my rose colored glasses were a little foggy thanks to Mr. Tapper.

Tapper provides a detailed account of the infamous Florida election debacle. His work includes a good deal of insightful background information on the major players and behind the scenes descriptions that escaped the attention of the popular media. He takes great pains to point out the hypocrisies and deceptions of both sides. The Gore side comes out only slightly better in Tapper's view.

The work, although interesting and useful, is not without flaws. At one point, for example, he explains why it would have been almost impossible for the Gore side to recount the ballots of all of the counties (Fla. law permits only county by county protests, requiring 63 sets of lawyers, etc.), but he then repeatedly slams him for not doing so. In addition, his conclusion that the public is ultimately reponsible for the mess is simply intellectually lazy. There were real villians in this case. The Florida legislature, for example, who passed conflicting and contradictory laws (such as allowing election protests to occur, but not allowing time to conduct them), bear responsibility for doing so, not the citizens who elected them. Leaders of both campaigns who chose to deceive, distort and engage in hypocritical actions in the interest of winning an election were certainly villians and helped to undermine confidence in the democratic process. Not to mention the courts . . . !

Tapper is one hell of a writer - I can't believe a book about politics would have me so engrossed. His witty style of writing makes the book very hard to turn down. There's one crazy event after another. As a resident of south Florida, I can attest to the accuracy with which Mr. Tapper describes the local political environment. It is a mess down here.

I also read the Miami Herald book on the election which, while definitely straight-ahead and neutral, was drier and offered little insight into the campaigns and their dirty tricks.

Not the case at all here, though. Something that obviously helped was that Tapper was actually *in* Florida when it all went down (pun intended), so a lot of it is actually first-hand storytelling.

And what a story: yuck. Disregard the reviewers who--apparently because it criticizes their party, and fairly so--try and label this a "liberal" tome. Nobody gets spared in this account, and you get some really fascinating, unbelievable stories of the slimy tactics on both sides.

What will ultimately amaze you after reading this is how little fact--during this and in general--is reported by the media. Apparently the media has become this big, dumb, unguided missle... its course determined by who can wrest control of it best, not by any sense of actually reporting reality.

The hoo-ha about Tapper's "accusation" of the conference call is just that... he states outright that it's not something provable.

Gore's staff comes off as haplessly outgunned, arrogant and, ultimately, incompetent. Not to mention sneaky. The Bush staff and generally the GOP down there at the time come off as being on a merciless crusade to deliver the election to their man, lying, spinning and strong-arming the entire time. It's kind of creepy.

Either way, Tapper seems to despise both candidates with equal aplomb, so let's just say that perhaps this is more a treatise on what politics has become, sadly.

Also: lots of funny, funny zingers in the book directed at everybody. Witty guy.

Brilliant recap of the Florida fiasco written from the perspective of an historian and a contemporary reporter. Makes the complex human drama of Florida in late 2000 come alive.

Although I am not a political junky, and at times get fed up with much of the US's political scene, a friend recommended this book to me (she read it on another friend's advice) and I was pleasently surpirsed, to the extent that I chose to write this review (which I've never done before).

This book is clearly clever, and more importantly, is a very good read that lets the reader know some of the dirty things that went down in Florida in an extremely interesting way. Much of the media seems quite dry to me these days, so it was nice to get a unique persepctive on all the Florida madness.

Two thumbs up for Down and Dirty and my best to to the author, Jake Tapper, on a job well done.

p.s. I even plan on starting to read Tapper's stuff on salon.com after reading this book.

...only a constant stream of idiotic decisions, crazy manouvers, and a bunch of stupid Supreme Court justices.

Overall, a very fascinating book! Personally, as a not-at-all cringing Gore supporter, I had so many conspiracy theories running through my head once the final Supreme Court decision was announced, that I felt as if I had joined the crazy Kennedy and UFO conspiracy cultists. Luckily, this book provided a more rational argument for the continual series of idiocies that occurred on a daily basis with the Florida decision.

What I appreciated most about this book is that the author has no real agenda to push, as he detests both candidates equally. The contempt he expresses regularly for both Bush and Gore comes through loud and clear. What remains is a scathing view of just how easily democracy can be subverted, and how little Americans really care about who governs us.

Who stole the election? Not Bush. Not Gore. Not lobbyists, and not the Supreme Court. It's all of us Americans who did not stand up and demand justice and the truth...