Although I've always thrived on tales of criminal mischief — and I've long felt a moral compulsion to cause trouble wherever I can — co-writing How To Rig An Election, the story of Allen Raymond's campaign-fixing rise and fall through the ranks of the GOP, was initially a daunting prospect for me. The thing is, I'm just not political. In the fifteen years that I've been eligible to vote, I've availed myself of the opportunity once. Maybe twice. I can't really remember. In any case, it was more than a decade ago.
To me, politically active people were either rich white kids sporting dreadlocks, or rich white kids in crested blazers--both unnatural anomalies who should be met with pitchforks and torches. It's almost impossible to get involved when you believe what I believe: that the rich will forever devastate the poor; that the poor will be forever devastated; and that the middle class will dine between them with ulcers and bewildered looks on their faces until Star Trek comes true.
Fortunately for me, How to Rig an Election turned out to be a story about the void of ideals and idealists in American politics. When I first spoke to Allen, he struck me as a pretty decent, funny guy. So when l asked him what in the hell had convinced him to work for the GOP in the first place and he told me it had initially been the money, I knew he wasn't so alien to me after all. Indeed, I'd worked for Rupert Murdoch's perfectly evil Newscorp for four years and had never begrudged my dark overlords their right to pay my rent.
Of course, the decent, funny Allen Raymond who I worked with had done some not entirely decent things throughout his career. But, while his experiences ultimately removed him from politics and brought him back to the reality of human life, they've left me more convinced than ever that most of the people who run, or seek to run, the country are absolute shits. The underhanded tactics Allen employed to win elections for ten years are by no means confined to one party, and they permeate every level of electioneering. So by the time a candidate is running for high office, they've already got two strikes against them: first, a long and sordid history; second, they have way too much money to care about, or even suspect, what life is like for actual humans.
The fact that the candidates and the voters have nothing in common but a nagging sense of disdain for one another gives rise again and again to the dominant political motivator — cynicism. One intention Allen and I had in writing the book was to illustrate how cynicism is bred, deployed, and exploited to the point where it drives out every other philosophy from the political system. A voter who knows this stands some chance of picking out the rare human being from the throng of veteran hacks. Yet here I am, chock full of that info, and it took me months after we finished writing the book to figure out if I'd ever return to the voting booth.
We have this great election coming up. Everyone's thrilled. No matter who wins, Bush and his horde will all have to go find ropes to piss up. What a time! But when I look at the candidates, the only thing that gives me the warm fuzzies is... the absence of Bush. None of the candidates seem that awful compared to Bush, but what the fuck kind of recommendation is that? I'm supposed to pull myself away from Malcolm in the Middle re-runs and break up a nearly perfect non-voting record just because none of these moneyed, cloying, robotic asses are likely to start another war?
Oh wait... There's Rudy. In a pack of under-inspired script-readers, he is the only candidate who truly stands out. Whether it's the Bernie Kerik connection, the 9/11 grandstanding, or covertly spending tax dollars on trips to make brittle, chafing love to his mistress, Rudolph Giuliani's trail of festering menace is well documented. He's already done enough that we can leave it to history to decide whether he's a man of bad character or no character. And since New Yorkers launched him upon the world, it's only right that we do what we can to make amends.
Using a tactic right out of How To Rig an Election, last week I stopped by the Board of Elections in Kew Gardens, Queens, filled out a new voter registration form, and declared myself a member of the Republican Party. Although the deadline to change parties expired in October, a helpful woman on the Board's phone line advised me to just go ahead and fill out a whole new registration form, since I wasn't sure whether or not I was actually a Democrat, and couldn't remember when I'd last voted. I honestly have no idea if I was ever a Democrat--I filled out a registration form in high school when I was 17, and God knows what I wrote. Anyway, I certainly never voted in one of their primaries.
After all these years, it turns out I was saving that honor for the Republicans. And if by some calamity Rudy does manage to hoodwink America into electing him, I will roam the wasted dystopia he leaves in his wake, declaring proudly and madly for all the mutants to hear, "I've been a Republican since oh-eight, and if I'd had my way that son of a bitch never would've gotten past New York!"
So there's a place for me in party politics after all.