The Best Show in Town

The Epic Battle for the 2000 Reform Party Presidential Nomination

By: M.D. Couturier

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore is mostly remembered for the Florida recount battle that lasted for over a month and ended with Bush winning the presidency by a razor-thin margin. Because of this post-election nail-biter, Americans have forgotten that the general election campaign was a dull contest between two mainstream candidates and the Republican and Democratic primaries were even more uninteresting affairs with predictable results. But for those looking for excitement, a circus had come to town in the form of the 2000 Reform Party primary.

The contest to determine who would be the presidential nominee of America’s largest third party was a truly wild spectacle featuring the most eclectic cast of characters any political organization has ever produced. And at the center of it all were five men: Texas billionaire and Reform Party founder H. Ross Perot, whose faction struggled to maintain its hold on the party; former pro-wrestler and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who led another faction that fought with the Perotistas for control; Conservative crusader Patrick J. Buchanan, the former Republican stalwart who jumped into the Reform primary in hopes of finally winning a presidential nomination; physicist and meditation guru John S. Hagelin, who challenged Buchanan from the Left and championed an eccentric approach to governing; New York real estate mogul Donald Trump, whose brief campaign and screwball antics convinced people that he was not a serious candidate and could never make it to the White House.

M.D. Couturier’s The Best Show in Town tells the story of this bizarre and chaotic political circus, which brought about the downfall of the Reform Party while producing ripple effects that contributed to the shocking outcome of the 2016 election.