The Body Politic
Gold, Victor & Cheney, Lynne
THE BODY POLITIC Victor Gold & Lynne Cheney/St. Martin's Press/$15.95 R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Heretofore my favorite satire of the American democratic zoo has been Henry Adams's Democracy....
...In Democracy Adams brings us the squalor of the political process...
...After reading The Body Politic, you will have a firmer sense of the condition of the Republic and you will have had a few hundred laughs...
...What is more, however, he is somewhat the milksop...
...They will also savor such lines as the P.R...
...Even an alter ego has an ego of his own...
...flack, and in recent times such creatures have made more history than generals, statesmen, or even socialites...
...In The Body Politic Cheney & Gold bring us the laughter...
...Strong had it right...
...ing rogue whose death during an adulterous exercise with a media cutie will put many of us in mind of another rich Vice President who also died volupt in the saddle...
...Thus The Body Politic can be read for entertainment and for instruction into the foolishness not only of Washington politics but also of contemporary society...
...Then there are the immensities that Cheney & Gold force us to meditate upon...
...To shape Bully Vandercleve's image and cosmetize his foibles while he was alive had been a challenge...
...111...
...Our narrator is Frank Lee, press secretary to Stewart Bullock Vandercleve, Vice President of the United States, the richest politician in America, a charmR. Emmett Tyrrell, is The American Spectator's Editor-In-Chief-for-Life...
...However, when the lively mind of Lynne Cheney, the duly appointed head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, combined with the mind of the incomparable Vic Gold, Adams's spot atop my chart was bound to be threatened...
...Cheney & Gold have heaved up a riotous tale peopled with many of Washington's real people...
...Now his hour is at hand...
...And forget not this memorable piece of campaign oratory: "They talk drivel, while values shrivel...
...flack's apothegm for felons, "Confession is good for the image," or the attorney general's exculpatory description of the ruse to cover up the Vice President's death as an "exigency of state...
...Who in real life, for instance, is the thug Deutsch, special assistant to White House Chief of Staff Regis Strong, and who is Strong...
...But some of you are going to protest that I am gilding the lily for the National Correspondent of this very journal...
...for instance, who is more important to the governance of this great country today—the statesmen, so-called, or their press hacks...
...With Cheney along for counsel on the natural instincts of the fairer sex in politics, he and his colleague have written a rollicking and instructive political satire that will satisfy the taste of every American Spectator spectator...
...But running with an insane Vice President does not daunt him...
...Who is the sententious columnist Jeremiah Sage, and is there a "Houlihan Show" squalling from the idiot box today...
...Political connoisseurs will have a feast identifying the targets of Cheney & Gold's ridicule...
...But it presented problems...
...As he puts it in the Washington can-do style, "We'll just have to live with it...
...Lee is a Washington type...
...One of the pleasures of the book is deciding who is who...
...Dealing with the media—manipulation, smoke and mirrors—that's my specialty, my mission in life...
...What pol in real life spills forth that kind of bosh...
...For a Vice President of the United States, the trick to being alive—so far as the public and news media are concerned—is either to make a gaffe or stir a controversy...
...And who presents the civilizing hand of the hack with a more arduous job—the political candidate who is robust and alert or the candidate who is at peace in the clutch of rigor mortis...
...Truly he is one of the most amusing writers under the American sun, and he is possessed of a vast breadth of knowledge, an original wit, and an elegant style...
...By now the President, who has not seen Bully in weeks, is convinced that his running mate is crazy...
...As the paradigmatic flack, Lee is immensely clever...
...He has not been informed of Bully's death...
...They obfuscate, while problems percolate...
...The vast undertaking was essential to the President's re-election hopes...
...This is the tale of how chaotic events have rendezvoused behind mere Frank Lee, summoning him to join with Regis Strong, the President's chief of staff, to delude the press corps, the political establishment, the entire nation, the world...
...They dither, while young dreams wither...
...Essentially he is a P.R...
...Lee was equal to the challenges...
...But to cover up his nonexistence for two entire weeks . . . that would be an exploit...
...It was the Washington flack's greatest moment...
...The Body Politic is an absorbing satirical roman a clef whose action takes place somewhere in the immediate future, allowing its authors to comment mordantly on the present and to hoot down all the pomposity and imbecility that they see around them...
...He is astoundingly energetic...
...So I couldn't, never in a million election quadrennials, have resisted the supreme 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1988 gambit...
...Vice President Bully Vandercleve has suddenly and unexpectedly assumed room temperature and Lee sees his opportunity: "It was simply this: blind flackery...
...So harrowing are the gaffes and so inflamed the controversies confected by Lee that eventually Bully becomes a more popular presence on the ticket than the President...
...Well, have you ever been dissatisfied with one of Gold's pieces for us...
Vol. 21 • November 1988 • No. 11
