Thank You for Your Servitude

Chapter 1

The Problem

August 2015-March 2016

E veryone had a theory about why it was their turn.

Chris Christie kept pushing the idea that voters tend to favor presidential candidates who represent the biggest departure from the incumbent. He was their departure. "That is the argument people make to me about why I should run," Christie told me, just before he started his prolonged public campaign of "looking at it." "They say, 'No one could be more the opposite of Barack Obama from a personality standpoint than you. Therefore, you're perfect.'"

Governor Perfect had built-in assets. New York-D.C. media and GOP donor types loved him. He was great on WFAN and a superstar banterer in the TV greenrooms. He was a merciless but familiar brute, like the New Jersey Turnpike. He would stay within certain lanes, unlike Trump. But if you were sick of the same old robots, clowns, Clintons, or Bushes, Christie was your viable off-ramp.

I ran into him in Cleveland before the first Republican debate of the 2016 campaign, or "cycle," as the pros call it. It was a Fox News production, billed on the chyrons as "The Rumble in the Rust Belt." Christie arrived at Quicken Loans Arena a few hours before the cattle call. He tossed out towel-snapping insults at reporters, comparing us to jackals, snakes, maggots, and other beloved creatures.

As he entered his backstage holding area in Cleveland, Christie compared himself to a penned-in bull, eager to make America his china shop. I wished him luck.

Likewise, Rand Paul, who was entering the arena at an adjacent loading dock. He had heard that libertarians were, at long last, "having a moment" in America. Why not him? He was younger, slicker, and less of a crank than his patriarch dad, Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas and a three-time presidential candidate. Rand had even gone straight enough to get elected to the Senate, from Kentucky. He was an odd duck, no question, but was he any worse than Ted Cruz?

Mark Leibovich

The author couldn t repeat the formula he used to such entertaining effect in his 2013 book, This Town . . . Instead, Leibovich s new book ingeniously shifts the focus . . . extremely funny in spots, although much of the humor has a whistling-past-the-graveyard quality. Like the Comedian in Alan Moore s graphic novel Watchmen, Leibovich was shocked out of his previous cynicism and absurdism (to some extent at least) by the enormity of Trump s threat. New York Times Book Review

[Leibovich is] just so good at this. He is a world-class ranter, continuing an American tradition that includes such dyspeptic luminaries as H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O Rourke . . . [He is] a brilliant interviewer able to wheedle not-quite-admissions from his subjects, who give him all the access in the world. Washington Post

The main attraction to Leibovich's work is his wicked satirical talent. He comes at his interviewees with a skewer in one hand, a scalpel in the other and a glint in his eye. His frequent eviscerations of major figures range from subtle to scabrous . . . [T]he material in Thank You is new, much of it from interviews done since the 2020 election . . . Thank You should not be mistaken for a fun read as This Town was often described . . . Thank You is on another plane of warning and foreboding. There are many laughs, to be sure, but with bitter aftertaste. And the message here, the final word, is anything but fun. NPR.org

A fascinating account . . . The greatest value of Thank You For Your Servitude is Leibovich s ability to understand the startling motivations of members of the House and Senate and many White House advisers and aides. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette