Year of the Rat: A 2008 Campaign Diary

By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone

This is the first installment of Matt Taibbi’s new 2008 presidential campaign blog.

Part 1: Fred Thompson’s Wocket’s Wed Gware; no toilets in Council Bluffs; the homeless discuss the race

I was only back on the campaign trail for about four hours before I started to feel unhappy again; this was back a few weeks ago, on actor Fred Thompson’s kickoff tour (see “Running on Empty” in the current Rolling Stone), specifically on a bus run between Des Moines and Council Bluffs on the afternoon of Thompson’s first day of campaigning.

Thompson had had a rough start to his presidential experience. His people had chosen to start things off by having a cow-eyed former Miss Iowa named Carolyn Haugland sing the national anthem for the large crowd of press and supporters gathered at a Des Moines convention center. Haugland is something every state should have – a right-wing beauty queen with a Hannitoid political blog (“That’s when it dawned on me,” she writes, “Bin Laden isn’t just a terrorist. He’s worse – a liberal!”) who eschews post-pageant catalogue work for stridently patriotic campaign performances. Her anthem would have been fine, except that she has a mild lisp. She ended up sounding like Robin Williams doing Elmer Fudd doing Bruce Springsteen doing “Fire.”

“Oah de wam-m-m-pahts we watch…” she belted. “Wuh so gaow-want-wee stwee-e-e-e-ming. And de wockets wed gware…!”

(Continued here.)