T H E P U L L O F P O L I T I C STell Us What You Really ThinkWhy Matt Taibbi ’87 Never Holds BackPhoto courtesy of Matt Taibbi ’87CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE SPRING 200826No one would call Matt Taibbi’s political reporting conventional. During the 2004 presidentialcampaign, he met John Kerry while wearing a gorilla suit. He went under cover to volunteer inPresident Bush’s Orlando campaign office. And he thinks nothing of disparaging his colleaguesin the press corps.As political correspondent for Rolling Stone, Taibbi revels in irreverence. His writingis usually controversial, often offensive, always insightful, and never boring. He spoke withConcord Academy magazine via email in early April.
T H E P U L L O F P O L I T I C S“ I think we should spend most of our timefollowing the money and comparatively littletime following the candidates on the trail.What we do now basically amounts to freeadvertising for the campaigns.”You wrote in early 2007 that you knewBarack Obama would be a presidentialnominee after hearing his 2004 conventionspeech. What derailed him in Texas andOhio?He wasn’t exactly derailed in Texas. If youinclude the caucus results, I think the delegatecount ended up going 65–61 Hillary, which isn’tbad considering that he was down twenty pointsin the polls with a few weeks to go before thevote. In Ohio, I think the thing with the NAFTAnegotiations with Canada hurt him, but there areother factors. I saw Hillary give a speech inYoungstown to a roaring crowd that hooted andhollered and hissed every time Obama’s namewas mentioned. The speech was at a highschool that had balked at a plan to merge with amostly black school in the same district. Now Ihate it when Hillary blames her losses on sexism,so I’m not going to say racism derailsObama when he loses. But it’s at least a smallfactor. I think he does best in states that have alot of black voters and a lot of white intellectuals.He fares poorest in states with large disaffectedmiddle/working-class white majorities. Hillary’scampaign is consciously aimed at the sort ofNixonian “Silent Majority” voter, the strugglingwhite guy pining for simpler times. Ohio is chockfull of those kinds of voters, particularly in thesouth. Also, Cleveland and Cincinnati didn’t turnout for Obama as much as he probably wouldhave hoped.Predict the outcome in November, withone sentence explaining why.I now think it’s going to be McCain. I think theDemocrats are suffering from overexposure, andit will hurt them in November.You refer to stump speech fatigue in arecent story about McCain. Roughly howmany stump speeches have you heard?How do you keep your writing fresh amidso much repetition?I’ve probably heard a thousand. In 2004 I had asystem—I memorized [Howard] Dean’s stumpclichés and assigned each of them numbers. Soinstead of copying down the texts of hisspeeches, I would just write 8-4-3-7-26-2-9 etc. Itsaved a lot of time.Tell us about the biggest gaffe you’veheard on the campaign trail?Honestly my favorite campaign gaffe wasn’tsomething I witnessed personally—I just missedit actually. It was when John Kerry ordered acheese steak in Philly with Swiss cheese. Imean, to ask for real cheese at all and not[Cheez] Whiz is bad enough, but Swiss? Thatguy was doomed from the start.It’s pretty clear from your writing that youcan’t stand Hillary Clinton. Did anythingon the campaign trail make you like her(or hate her less)?Well, the Clinton people have a way about themthat’s sort of off-putting. There’s this sense ofentitlement that hovers over their whole operation.They have this attitude—and this bleedsthrough into Hillary’s speeches—that the presidencybelongs to them and other pretenders tothe throne are not legitimate, dirty somehow,evil for even trying. Whenever you ask theirpeople difficult questions, they roll their eyes atyou, like they can’t believe they have to wastetheir time on such nonsense when (insert evilopponent/political adversary here) is gainingground every minute! Their attitude is, “Hey,keep your eyes on the ball; there are enemies allaround!” Except this year, it wasn’t the Repub -licans gaining ground but another Democrat,Barack Obama. But they’re incapable of notdemonizing their opponents. You should hear thehostile tone of some of these Hillary events, thesneering remarks about Obama’s “hope” and“pretty talk,” the anger they direct at their opponent.You’d think that Obama was Satan himselfor something. It’s nuts.What are the main differences betweencovering the 2004 and 2008 elections,aside from the fact that you haven’t (yet)followed a candidate in a gorilla suitthis time?I think there’s a big difference in the way thepress is behaving. In 2004 they were all stillafraid of the Republicans and were constantlyhounding the candidates they thought were “tooliberal.” I heard that question over and overagain: “Aren’t you too liberal to be president?”Now that the war has gone in the tank andBush’s numbers are down, their behavior is justthe opposite. They swoon openly for the Hillary-Obama show and batter the Republicans forbeing bores and clowns. It’s really revolting.You disparaged the press in a Rolling Stonestory called “Merchants of Trivia.” Howwould you change the way the press corpscovers presidential campaigns?I think we should spend most of our time followingthe money and comparatively little time followingthe candidates on the trail. What we donow basically amounts to free advertising for thecampaigns. I think the TV stations and the campaignshave a symbiotic relationship—the networksgive you this credulous, hagiographic viewof the candidates, and the candidates in returnspend mountains of money on TV advertising.It’s in the interests of both to keep a positiverelationship. Meanwhile, the candidates suck uphundreds of millions in campaign contributionsthat will almost all be given back in favors afterthe election. I mean, one in four bundlers [thosewho raise a certain amount, usually $100,000, fora campaign] gets federal appointments. And wepretend the government isn’t for sale? That’swhat we should focus on, the money and thefavors.Describe a political story that you lookback on and cringe.I’m not thrilled with a piece I wrote about Iraq.I think I was duped by the army. They embedyou with these nice kids who you end up gen-27<strong>WWW</strong>.<strong>CONCORDACADEMY</strong>.<strong>ORG</strong> SPRING 2008
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