Michael Hastings is probably the best, most fearless reporter we have -- among the last of a dying breed. As it is, the major media has assigned suck-ups, lapdogs, presstitutes and whoresponsdents to cover the political elites and it's been a sickening experience. Hastings is different; his investigative masterpiece, "The Operators," was a phenomenal front line account of the war in Afghanistan, the pressures on embedded journalists to provide Judith-Miller-style sycophant "journalism." His article in Rolling Stone and subsequent book resulted in the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. A brilliant achievement.
Accordingly, the first-person account of Hastings' experience inside the bubble of Obama's re-election campaign was highly anticipated. Hell, it even had the endorsement of Glenn Greenwald, possibly the greatest analyst of American politics we have out there.
So the book is a pastiche of hit or miss, with the hits making this quick read well worthwhile. Hastings made it obvious that he wasn't into the Buzzfeed assignment of hanging out with the slobbering, pro-Obama press corps who shadowed the president everywhere on the campaign. In a terrific, candid moment, Hastings basically says he's slumming with this assignment. "I told [a war vet] how campaign reporting was for me a kind of methadone, a weak substitute, but that I could take what I could get." Brilliant analogy, but also highly confessional. Hastings was so-not-into this assignment at the outset.
But he learned how to get into it.
He admits at the end: "Obama's America. I love it here." He also confesses to being utterly charmed by Obama when the president came out for an "off-the-record" encounter with the press corps at an Orlando hotel. "I was riding high . . . Cool! I'd called my close friends and told them about it; my wife, detecting a kind of lovesickness, mocked me __ you are so in the tank now . . . Yes I was, . . . and the tank was feeling pretty good, 82 degrees and breezy near the beach."
In "Panic," Romney is painted as this weird, out-of-touch doof who makes misstep after misstep. So confident is the campaign in their man, that there's almost no panic in "Panic." The fawning presstitutes surrounding Hastings is really more of a public relations crew that insulates Obama from bad press.
Where Hastings is at his very best is when he indelicately mocks the slobbering, lazy, party-hungry WH press corps following Obama's barnstorming tour. Reporters "lose their minds when they're around Obama," he reports. He mocks an unnamed Wall Street Journal reporter (shh, it's Laura Meckler) for whipping out a Obama-looking sock puppet at the secret Orlando meet-the-press event and speaking in a squeaky puppet voice to ask him for an exclusive interview. That drunken encounter was supposed to be "off-the-record," but Hastings reported it on Buzzfeed. Awesome stuff.
Hastings also tangles with Ed Henry, the toothless head of the White House Press Corps Association, who threatens to kick him off the campaign tour for actually reporting that the Orlando event took place. (Apparently, the fact that it happened AT ALL WAS OFF-THE-RECORD, not just anything that was said. How despicable is our mainstream WH press corps these days, anyway? With the possible exceptions of Jake Tapper and AP's Matthew Lee, they are all spineless elitists, desperate not to lose their invitations to the Annual White House Press Correspondents' dinner with the president.)
The most compelling part of the book occurs two days after Obama is elected, and Hastings confronts Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the $30 million he raised for an Obama SuperPAC. After some mildly tough questioning, Emanuel seizes Hastings' arm violently, stares menacingly into Hastings' eyes and growls menacingly, "I'm gonna be clear. You guys (at Rolling Stone) have screwed two professional people and one of them is the President of the United States." When Emanuel tries to intimidate Hastings, the fiery reporter lashes back: "You guys shouldn't have escalated in Afghanistan. . . Four Americans died there last week, buddy."
Name one other reporter in the country who would have mocked Emanuel as "buddy?" You can't, and that's why anything that Michael Hastings writes must immediately be consumed. He confesses to MSNBC's Martin Bashir that he wouldn't have asked Obama on the campaign trail about "drones or personal liberties" -- but that thought wouldn't even cross the minds of most of the useless stenographers of the mainstream press who sit in first class on the plane for the reporters. Hastings is the best we have, and though the ecosystem he was in wouldn't permit him to be himself, at his personal best, he gives us the best we're going to get.
I only wish Buzzfeed Ben had assigned him to cover the Ron Paul campaign. With all the diry tricks and voter fraud, what an interesting book Michael Hastings would have actually produced, something that would have taken full advantage of his brilliant journalistic skills . . .
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![Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign (A BuzzFeed/Bl ue Rider Press Book) by [Michael Hastings]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fk+JA5SdL._SY346_.jpg)
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America's best reporter on the Obama re-election beat -- as good as it gets, but not as brilliant as "The Operators"
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 3, 2013
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2013
