I got a review copy of Joe Trippi’s new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in the mail yesterday and I ended up staying up until 2AM reading it, and I’m paying for it with yawns and scratchy eyes today. But I’m glad I did it.
For starters, Trippi can write — he’s put together a campaign narrative that’s a cross between the Fellowship of the Ring and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. This was an exciting adventure, half tech startup and half presidential bid, and after all, Trippi’s professional career has been devoted to producing snappy written and verbal materials for candidates, and it shows. He’s really, really good.
What’s more, Trippi is a genuine, fire-breathing, rip-roaring Internet evangelist who makes me want to jump up and shout hallelujah. I mean, halfway through this book, I was starting to daydream about moving back to the US to help use the Internet to sway elections and change the world — and that’s ALREADY what I do for a living.
Finally, this is a flat-out inspirational story, a story about how the future arrived in politics, about how the transformation in politics has been downplayed by the entrenched interests who stand to lose from it, about how we’ve only just seen the beginning of a new form of civic engagement in the US and all over the world.
I grew up on narratives of civil rights organizers, Yippies, revolutionaries and great scientists, and I’ve always had a firm belief that we can change the world by applying our shoulders to it and pushing. Trippi’s book affirms that belief for me, and gives me renewed hope for the future.
The Dean for America campaign arrived at just the right moment–a pivotal point in our political history, when forty years of a corrupt system had reduced politics to its basest elements–the race to raise money from one-quarter of one percent of the wealthiest Americans and corporate donors in exchange for dictating the policy of the country. Then, the side with the most money simply bought the most television ads to manipulate the most people–while instant polling, focus groups, and message testing ref ined the struggle to a few swing voters in a few key districts in a few key states, blurring any significant differences between the monolithic parties and destroying honest debate about issues like health care and the war in Iraq. Until every candidate sounded exactly the same, and a member of either party could proudly stand up and proclaim that his party had passed a Patients’ Bill of Rights–an utterly meaningless bill that, incidentally, *didn’t provide health care for one single American.*