One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In

by Walter Shapiro

The political columnist for "USA Today" offers behind-the-scenes stories from his travels with Democratic candidates for the 2004 presidential nomination, providing portraits of the candidates in the early days of their campaigns before the coming non-stop media coverage.p media coverage.

Genres: History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a journalist and I was working for a New Hampshire paper at the time of the 2004 primary, so this book invoked some nostalgia for me.

It also reminded me why I thank my lucky stars every day that I'm now a courts reporter, and not covering politics. From the book:

"Jimmy Walker, New York City's Jazz Age mayor, claimed: 'No girl was ever ruined by a book.' But this middle-aged boy, as I have grown to be, certainly had his life upended by one. After reading Theodore White's 'The Making of the President 1960' as an adolescent, I began dreaming about enlisting in the the privileged brotherhood of campaign reporters. To witness history being forged, to share the confidences of candidates on the cusp of the White House, to part part in the hype and hoopla of our quadrennial rite of democratic decision -- that all seemed a splendid adventure. How noble, how naive. I was like a boy who grew up thrilling to stories about powerful locomotives and Casey Jones only to sign on with railroads in the era of Amtrak. The job description may read the same, but it's not like it was in the age of coal-fired boilers.

"I have covered every presidential race since 1980, each time feeling more disheartened by the poll-propelled, focus-group-fixated mechanics of modern politics. My journalistic credentials, dangling from a chain around my neck, are in good order. But there is nothing ennobling about being in the middle of a hundred-person press pack, surrounded by technicians wielding boom mikes as lances and camera tripods as battering rams, elbowing and shoving, as I hold my tape recorder aloft in the hopes of catching the front-runner robotically utter a banality like, 'I'm running because I want a better life for all Americans.' The rat-a-tat ads, the charges and counter-charges, the opposition research emails and snarling spin doctors all reduce politics to a Hobbesian jungle."

[Jake Allport Beauregard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a niche book. It is solely for the hardcore political junkie. The political junkie who sometimes find themselves more ingrained in the race than the result. Walter Shaprio gives a masterful and witty eye into the 2004 Democrats for President. Here it all is, those mindless tour buses across states, Iowa, New Hampshire, where politicians who dominated the headlines at the time are all but forgotten today: Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Dennis Kuchinich, etc. This is not a book for everyone, and I would even go so far as to say it's not for most people. But to that particular audience who casually follow the polls and the fringe candidates, those die hard primary voters, this is a very entertaining read.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heard of the title on C-Span's Book-TV. Parts were good. Parts were quite opinionated without much substance, it seemed.