Homo Politicus

Fans of Dana Milbank's often cutting columns in the WASHINGTON POST will no doubt enjoy this inside-the-Beltway look at the creatures that thrive in our nation's capital. But like many good column ideas that get stretched into books, the jokes wear thin relatively quickly. Fortunately, Milbank's familiarity with some of Washington's more eccentric and spectacular figures keeps listeners entertained. He's equally scathing in his comments on politicians and their supporters on both sides of the aisle. Johnny Heller provides a clear and serviceable narration. His pacing and diction are, as usual, strong, but his voice does not vary much through the narrative, making it hard for the listener to remain engaged over long stretches. J.B.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

October 1, 2007
Mix one part freshman anthropology with nine parts Washington insider politics and you'll get this caustic sendup of “Potomac Man.” Veteran Washington Post
political reporter Milbank rummages through a bagful of (sometimes forced) ethnographic clichés—consultants and pollsters are shamans, lobbyists are the Beltway version of Melanesian Big Men—but takes none of them seriously. These pseudoscholarly conceits are just pegs on which to hang his colorful accounts of recent Washington scandals, humiliations and felonies. Many of these, like the three-ring circus surrounding superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, are well known, but the author also spotlights the everyday antics of congressmen and the behind-the-scenes skullduggery that propels the ship of state. His contempt is resolutely bipartisan, targeting both Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy for his drug-induced vehicular mishaps and Dick Cheney for concocting “folk tales”—duly debunked by Milbank—to sell the Iraq War. Sometimes the author's derision seems knee-jerk rather than considered; when he diagnoses Democrat Harry Reid with “Potomac-variant Tourette's syndrome” because the senator uses phrases like “intractable war in Iraq,” one wonders about the media's role in enforcing Washington's euphemistic double-talk. Still, Milbank knows where the fossils are buried and offers a canny, entertaining field guide to the manners and misdeeds of the political species.