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The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme
Random House
December 2008
On Sale: November 25, 2008
128 pages
ISBN: 1400068282
EAN: 9781400068289
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
Displaying the form that made bestsellers of Obliviously On
He Sails and A Heckuva Job, tales of the Bush
Administration in rhyme, Calvin Trillin trains his verse on
the 2008 race for the presidency. Deciding the Next Decider is an ongoing campaign narrative
in verse interrupted regularly by other poems, such as a
country tune about John Edwards called “Yes, I Know He’s a
Mill Worker’s Son, But There’s Hollywood in That Hair” and
a Sarah Palin song about her foreign policy
credentials: “On a Clear Day, I See Vladivostok.” It covers
Mitt Romney’s transformation (“Mitt Romney’s saying now he
should have known / A stem cell’s just a human, not quite
grown”), the speculation about whether Al Gore was trimming
down to run (“Presumably, they looked for photo ops / To
see what Gore was stuffing in his chops”), the slow-motion
implosion of Hillary Clinton’s drive to the White House
(“Some pundits wrote that Hil’s campaign might fare / A
little better if Bill wasn’t there”), and the differing
responses of Barack Obama and John McCain to the financial
crisis (“Though coolness has its limitations, it’ll /
Prevent comparisons with Chicken Little”). Beginning at the 2006 midterms, Deciding the Next Decider
resurrects the nonstarters like George Allen (“He fit
what’s often valued by the Right: / Quite cheerful,
Reaganesque, and not too bright”) and the low-energy Fred
Thompson (“The pros said, ‘That’s a state he has to take, /
And he just might, if he can stay awake’ ”). And it carries
through to the vote that made Barack Obama the forty-fourth
president of the United States.
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