The e-mail from Mike Biundo reminded me of his bit part in Michael Lewis's Trail Fever, Lewis's book-length account of the 1996 presidential election season that grew out of his coverage for The New Republic. Here's the relevant story, from Lewis's New Hampshire dispatches:

[Pat] Buchanan's press director, Mike Biundo, jokingly asks [Alan] Keyes what it would take for him to quit the race and endorse Pat. Keyes flips out, yelling and screaming and accusing Buchanan of racism. A week or so ago Buchanan included in one of his speeches a story from the Nixon years about John Dean, John Mitchell, and the Hopi Indians. (The gist of it was that Dean plea-bargained with the court to stay out of jail with charitable work for the Hopi Indians. After Dean cut his deal Mitchell's lawyer followed. But before he spoke to the judge, Mitchell leaned over to him and whispered in a voice loud enough that the whole courtroom heard, "If they offer you the Indians, turn them down.")

"Why is this funny?" screams Keyes at Biundo, so loudly that all of a sudden our table is the focus of attention for half the ballroom. "Will someone please explain to me why this is funny?"

Certainly, the way Keyes tells the story, it isn't funny at all, but who knows? With a little less indignation and a little more wallop in the punch line, it could work. You can't help but pity poor Biundo. He is sitting there with a kind of nervous nausea on his face, staring up at a black man raving on like a lunatic about the importance of Indians to the Republican Party. If you saw this scene unfold on the street you would cross over to avoid the man who is shouting and wonder why they ever let those people out of the mental institutions in the first place. But here it is a major media event, the temporary centerpiece of the Republican primary. Reporters with notepads and bearded guys with TV cameras come racing to capture the moment. The New Hampshire primary is passing before Mike Biundo's eyes. You could see him thinking: I'm going to be remembered as the guy who hates Indians.

How I wish somebody would put Lewis on the campaign trail this year to cover the midterms.

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