“As a gay man who contorted himself into defending homophobes,” he writes, “I am more than capable of inhabiting the mind of the enabler.”
work for social conservatives who virulently opposed same-sex marriage. The episode with McCain was just the beginning. He was upset that McCain might hurt his chances with Republican voters, rather than excited at the prospect of working for someone who didn’t “want to deny me the ability to have a totally chill, off-the-books, man-man ceremony.” (McCain later clarified that he was only talking about private ceremonies he did “not believe that gay marriages should be legal.”) Miller was planning to work on McCain’s presidential campaign. “Why We Did It” recalls a moment when Miller panicked after John McCain made a stray comment in 2006 that was barely, just barely, pro-gay marriage. His fixation on victory was so consuming that it could often override his personal interests. He got addicted to the “horse race.” He was in it to win. There was a “bizarre type of fame” that came with “D.C. He liked the excitement, the money, the mischief. Miller, a millennial who started working in Republican politics when he was 16, depicts himself as someone who was so preoccupied with “the Game” that for years he gave little thought to the degraded culture that his bare-knuckle tactics helped perpetuate. The most honorable parts of “Why We Did It,” Miller’s darkly funny (if also profoundly dispiriting) post-mortem/mea culpa, are the ones that dispense with pious pretense. The former political operative Tim Miller knows better than to try. Too often, when straining to put some daylight between themselves and the Trump administration, regretful Republicans have reached for elaborate excuses and high-toned rhetoric. WHY WE DID IT A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell By Tim Miller 259 pages.
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