"How can the senator have two favorite sandwiches? Small-but-inquiring minds want to know," Folman writes. Republicans played it up as a character issue.
So a wily veteran staffer comes up with a novel plan to improve his public character: Put out a bogus story that Phillips had cheated on his wife long ago. What could be more endearingly human than that? The fallout from that plan and assorted other disasters makes for an engaging and clever story. Folman tells it well, with a twisted plot and characters worthy of Carl Hiaasen, describing how people manipulate each other in their own little campaigns to achieve their goals. And he writes with a deliciously jaundiced eye. He describes how a budding photographer gained acclaim with her photos of "the starving and limbless children of Bisanthia" and went on to projects like "the Starving Children of Coal Country, the Limbless Families of the Tellusia Swamps, the Tongueless Women of Botu and the Rhythmless Amateur Dancers of Hackensack, New Jersey." So if you're sick of the real U.S. presidential campaign by now, take heart. You can have a lot of fun by reading about this fictional one.