Millionaire Republican

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 3 OCT 2005

Root, author of The Zen of Gambling, has made millions as a television sports-betting handicapper. This chest-thumping political screed-cum motivational tract systematizes that accomplishment into "The 18 Republican Secrets of Mega-Wealth and Unlimited Success"-a hodgepodge of self-help nostrums about positive thinking, clean living and the centrality of salesmanship to all human achievement, with a smattering of financial opportunism. (Secret #3 is "Own Real Estate in International Tax Havens.") But Root also aspires to public office, so he devotes most of the book to partisan vitriol. Republicans, he asserts, are "daring risk-takers" whose "ambition, drive, vision, courage, confidence and commitment" prompts them to start businesses and enter the "Investor Class." Democrats, deluded by "corrupt, soulless" liberals, prefer a "'safe' (but mediocre) paycheck" to the challenge of entrepreneurship and therefore lead "lives of despair...working in jobs they hate for bosses they despise...dependent on Big Brother" and are reduced to "complaining, whining, attending protests" and taxing Republicans. Throughout, the author seethes with class resentment against the even wealthier "spoiled-brat trust-fund crowd," who supposedly advocate high taxes on the rich to keep others from becoming rich. Root is rarely coherent or engaging; the book feels like an infomercial harangue interspersed with the sort of off-the-wall rant you would expect if you asked your bookie for his political philosophy. In it, one can make out the tenets of contemporary casino capitalism: the risk-taking investor is the hero of the economy, wage labor is a dead-end for suckers and the millionaire is the champion of the little guy against the elitists. Never mind liberal democrats; Republicans themselves may cringe at this ugly, fatuous rendering of their world-view.