The final tally for last week’s Attention-Whore Index was as much about the future as the past. Matt Gaetz (40.8 percent) won it for the first time, readers having rewarded his attempt to shut down the United States government (a bit of grandstanding that rests, in his case, on a foundation of all-around odiousness). And with his pivot to taking down part of that government—the Kevin McCarthy part—Gaetz has positioned himself shrewdly for this week’s A.W.I. Second place went to Bob Menendez (32.8 percent) on the strength of a spectacularly vivid indictment that catapulted the senator into strange new territory. Or new-ish: he’s (yawn) been indicted for bribery, conspiracy, and fraud before. We’ll look to him—and his wife, Nadine, who, according to recent reports, killed a man in a car crash in 2018—for additional strong A.W.I. outings once the trial starts. As for Marjorie Taylor Greene, while she turned in yet another solid performance (16.4 percent), one has to wonder: Will she ever win this thing?
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
