Well, now we know why the author of this much gossiped about, heavily marketed new book wanted to remain anonymous: O: A Presidential Novel is a thoroughly lackadaisical performance — trite, implausible and decidedly unfunny.
Although the novel’s publisher has borrowed the marketing strategy of Primary Colors (whose anonymous author was later revealed to be journalist Joe Klein), O has none of that book’s panache or satiric wit. In fact O bears about as much resemblance to Primary Colors as Primary Colors did to All the King’s Men.
There has been plenty of online speculation that the author of O may be a political reporter, blogger or onetime member of US President Barack Obama’s staff, but while he or she clearly has a feel for what it’s like to be on the campaign trail, much of what passes for inside knowledge in these pages would be known to anyone who’s read a bunch of campaign accounts, subscribed to Mike Allen’s Playbook or watched Morning Joe.
The novel — set during the 2012 campaign — wants us to think we’re learning something about the real-life White House and the real-life mediasphere. But the characters who are meant to sound familiar — including a news-aggregating Web site’s founder, who speaks in “heavily accented English,” and a rumpled White House adviser, charged with “protecting the president’s brand” — are clumsily drawn caricatures. And while an executive at the book’s publisher says, in an online note, that he hopes this book may “offer some resonant truths about what President Obama is really thinking,” the title character turns out to be a snarkily drawn cartoon too: a conceited narcissist whose inner life consists of gripes about his opponents, frustration with his job, daydreams about golf and self-congratulatory pats on his own back, combined with put-downs of the country at large.
Anonymous has President O thinking, “This is who he had always expected to be, this competent, cool, commanding leader who was always a step ahead of his rivals, a step ahead of the country, if truth be told.” O complains that the Tea Party is a mob of “conspiracy nuts, immigrant haters, vengeful Old Testament types, publicity hustlers, and people who just have way too much time on their hands,” united by “their sneering self-righteousness and burning hatred for me.” And he believes “his gift as a public speaker was greater and rarer than the one commonly attributed to him, his ability to inspire people”: “He enlightened them. He made them understand, without making them feel threatened, that America could be a better society, that Americans could be more just, braver, wiser than they had been.”
This president is described as fantasizing, in very bad romance-novel prose, about running against a Sarah Palin-like character referred to as “the Barracuda”: “There she was, baby on her hip, thick hair piled up high, chin out, defiant, taunting, flaunting that whole lusty librarian thing, sweet and savory, mother and predator, alluring and dangerous.” He’s also described as agreeing to go with an early, highly negative campaign against his 2012 opponent even though it completely undermines his image as being “the antidote to relentless partisanship”: He “would have to battle for nine miserable months to damage another man’s reputation while mostly relying on events to improve his own.”
O’s hypocrisy and arrogance, along with improbable plot developments, make it hard not to suspect that the author of this novel is a Republican sympathizer — or at the very least someone very disillusioned with Obama.
We are asked to believe that the Republicans have easily found the ideal candidate to run against President O — a “square-jawed, straight-backed, irresistibly perfect” fellow named Thomas Morrison, who combines the impressive military credentials of General David H. Petraeus with the civilian resume (Northeastern governor, CEO) of Mitt Romney, a man described in these pages with the sort of breathless encomiums that a GOP press office could only dream of. We’re told that Morrison is attractive, affable, courteous, dignified, well spoken, a military man with a “natural aptitude” for politics and a “talent for declaring his support for positions that were broadly popular with the voters with arguments that appeared insightful and principled.”
Somehow there are no real divisions in the Republican party in this 2012 — no widening schism between Tea Party supporters and the establishment, no bitter quarrels between its base and more centrist members — and Morrison not only sails through Iowa and New Hampshire and on to the nomination, he then runs to the left (yes, the left) of President O on the war in Afghanistan. Predictably enough, the shenanigans of the book’s other characters — including O’s new campaign manager, an ambitious young reporter for a Politico-like publication, and a wealthy political donor — will converge to take the race between Morrison and O into “the City of Dead Heat, the Valley of Sudden Death” in its closing days.
The author of O is described on the book flap as someone who “has been in the room with Barack Obama,” but given this novel’s many inane implausibilities, the reader can’t help but think that the writer was either a lousy observer or that the room was really enormous — a hotel ballroom, perhaps, or maybe a convention center.
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
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Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
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