Looking Forward to It

Novelist, journalist, and wandering scribe Stephen Elliott does not know what to think of America's voters, of 2004's desperate and over-heated run for the presidency, or of the legitimacy of the political system en masse. He doesn't know whether to love Howard Dean or try to love John Kerry or try, simply, to get excited about politics. But what he does know is that most Americans are as confused, taxed, and brokenhearted as he is.

Looking Forward to It is thus the chronicle of one ordinary fellow's skeptical—and often hilarious—journey through the election process. With the author on the campaign trail, we meet washed-out campaign managers, idealistic publicists, corrupted journalists, world-weary auditorium janitors, recovering drug addicts, and, of course, politicians. Elliott's engaging report fully documents a journey into the center of "the thing," our country, where Americans high and low come together to participate in the most profound and fundamental gesture of democracy: the election.