FICTION: O: A Presidential Novel,By Anonymous, Simon & Schuster, 353pp. £12.99
AMONG THE GREAT disappointments of Barack Obama’s presidency for his former admirers on the American left is the enduring influence in the White House of Bill Clinton and his coterie. Many of Obama’s early supporters viewed him as the anti-Clinton, a straight arrow that would have no truck with the shifting, triangulating style of his Democratic predecessor but would stand up to big business and the special interests who had become Clinton’s closest political allies.
After two years on the campaign trail bashing Clinton’s legacy, Obama pivoted effortlessly after the 2008 election to stuff his administration with former Clinton aides, including economic adviser Larry Summers and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Since last November’s thumping for Democrats in congressional elections, Obama has moved further to the centre, a position he is likely to hold at least until the next presidential vote, in 2012.
Now the process of Clintonification has gone a step further with the publication of O: A Presidential Novel, a political thriller set in Obama's White House by an author who remains anonymous. The book and the hype surrounding its author's identity have drawn inevitable comparisons with Primary Colors, based on Clinton's rise to power, which was published anonymously in 1996.
The Timemagazine journalist Joe Klein eventually admitted to writing Primary Colors,but not before months of speculation during which he denied it a number of times. The publisher of O says its author is a Washington insider who "has been in the room" with Obama, and it sought to keep the speculation bubbling by asking likely suspects in the US capital to neither confirm nor deny that they wrote the book.
The guessing game didn’t last long, however, before the consensus settled on Mark Salter, a former speechwriter for the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. Salter’s non-denial denial – “I’ve been asked not to comment, and I won’t” – seemed to confirm the general suspicion, although some sceptics suggested that, if Salter has “been in the room” with Obama, it must have been a very big room.
O is the first black president of the United States, a highly educated, gifted orator who enjoys golf and basketball and remains devoted to his family. Other characters include Avi Samuelson, a presidential adviser transparently based on David Axelrod, and Bianca Stefani, who runs a news aggregating site called The Stefani Report. Lest any readers fail to recognise Arianna Huffington, we are told she speaks in heavily accented English and dismisses basic journalistic standards as "so old media, dahling". When we discover that the Sarah Palin character is called the Barracuda, which happens to be one of Palin's real-life nicknames, it becomes clear that in this roman-à-clef, the clef is not so much under the mat as pasted to the front door.
The novel is set in the near future, from spring 2011 to the November 2012 presidential election, and its publisher warns solemnly that it will ultimately be overtaken by real-life events. Cal Regan, an ambitious young political operative, takes charge of O’s re-election campaign after the previous campaign manager is caught using an underage prostitute.
Regan realises that the campaign will be a tough one when the Republicans nominate Tom Morrison, a decorated general, one-term governor and successful businessman who seems to be a composite of Gen David Petraeus and the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with a dash of McCain’s independent spirit thrown in. Morrison wrong-foots O by running a positive campaign and outflanking the president on the left on the war in Afghanistan.
It is Regan’s relationships with a wealthy campaign donor and with a pushy young reporter from a political website, however, that produce the greatest threat to O’s re-election.
US critics have drawn unflattering comparisons between Primary Colorsand O, complaining that the latest novel is sloppily written and full of implausible plotting. As a piece of political clairvoyance Ois unpersuasive, but it captures nicely the atmosphere of a US election campaign, the unique strain of personal ambition found in Washington and the vanity of wealthy political donors.
The book's greatest weakness lies in its central character, whose interior life remains as mysterious as Obama's own and whose voice seldom rings true. This president is not only petulant, narcissistic and condescending but also strangely lacking in political sophistication, as when he considers the Tea Party movement: "A movement? Are you kidding me? A disorganized mob of conspiracy nuts, immigrant haters, vengeful Old Testament types, publicity hustlers, and people who just have way too much time on their hands. The only thing that unites them is their sneering self-righteousness and burning hatred for me." In Primary Colorsit was the relationship between Governor Jack Stanton and his wife that gave the story much of its vigour, and the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton remains an object of endless fascination for many Americans. Tony and Cherie Blair may have offered similarly fruitful inspiration to Robert Harris in his political thriller Ghost.
By the time Primary Colorsand Ghostwere written, Clinton and Blair were already advanced enough in their political careers that the public was willing to believe they were capable of the most outlandish actions in pursuit of power. The same is not yet true of Obama, leaving this novel as a busy, sometimes appealing political yarn with a big O-shaped void at its heart.
Denis Staunton is Foreign Editor of The Irish Times. He was Washington correspondent from 2005 to 2009
