Fletcher Knebel (1911–1993)

This is a gripping political thriller written in 1964 but still of great relevance today. Mark Hollenbach is a President of the United States in the near future of the 1970s. A junior senator from Iowa, Jim McVeagh, begins to notice strange, extreme and aggressive, even paranoaic, remarks by the President, including in a private meeting where the latter hints that he wants to encourage McVeagh to stand for Vice President in the upcoming elections later the same year. Hollenbach's paranoia is show more shown by a belief that a mysterious cabal is out to get him, including his current Vice President, who has been forced to resign after a scandal involving links with a property developer. His delusions of grandeur are expressed through a range of ideas including creating a new political union with Canada and Scandinavia, including potentially forcing other European countries into it, and routine national wiretapping of all telephone calls. McVeagh is largely not believed as he tries to convince other senior officials of the need to move against the President for the good of the nation. Eventually however, he discovers that the Defence Secretary Sidney Karper has been harbouring similar doubts in the context of the President's role as final decision maker for the potential launch of nuclear weapons. In the end the dilemma is resolved in a slightly unexpectedly downbeat and interestingly ambiguous way. A very good and gripping read. show less

Fletcher Knebel''s Night of Camp David is one of the more obscure entries on the list of decades-old novels that have become newly relevant and interesting in the era of the Trump presidency. This 1965 political thriller, written while Congress was crafting and debating the 25th Amendment, concerns a senator's growing belief that the President of the United States is dangerously paranoid and mentally unfit to remain in office.

President Mark Hollenbach's erratic behavior, delusions of show more grandeur, and conspiracy theories prompt the junior senator from Iowa, James MacVeagh, to conclude that the President evidences the clinical definiton of paranoia: "The individual feels that he is being singled out and taken advantage of, mistreated, plotted against, stolen from, spied upon, ignored, or otherwise mistreated by his 'enemies'." Can such a man be trusted with the ability to order the firing of nuclear weapons? And eerily similar to Trump's summit with Putin in Helsinki, here MacVeagh determines that Hollenbach must not be allowed to proceed to a planned meeting in Zurich with the stoic and practical Russian premier Zuchek: "Who knew what fantastic secret agreement might emerge from such a meeting? Zuchek, a patient, steel-nerved negotiator, utterly devoted to Russia's self-interest, vs. Hollenbach, whose once brilliant mind was now obsessed with fancied tormentors and played like a child with the toy blocks of destiny."

The plot moves along swiftly enough, though the novel is often repetitive as the senator's suspicions are rehashed to everyone in the expanding cast of political characters, including a Supreme Court Justice named Cavanaugh(!), who weigh in on the issue and consider what action, if any, to take. The story promises confrontation and rancor, but ultimately delivers a tepid yet wholly reasonable resolution. Recommended largely for its prescient elements rather than any literary merits. show less

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This book is going for a penny plus postage on the online used book store of your choice, and I recommend you buy it now before the rush later this year. Written in 1972, anticipating the 1976 election, it concerns the story of Eddie Quinn, an obscure former Congressman and New Jersey Turnpike Commissioner who is unexpectedly thrust to national prominence when the failing Republican presidential candidate suddenly dies three weeks before the election show more and the party reaches desperately for a replacement; nobody, including the colourless Vice-Presidential candidate, wants to go down in history as the loser, and Quinn is good-looking, doesn't drink or smoke, and is not known for dangerous views.

Although the Democrats are well in the lead (with an intellectual Methodist state governor rather reminiscent of their real 1976 candidate, Jimmy Carter), Quinn launches a populist rearguard campaign, promising tax cuts, an end to the military draft for young people, a system of ombudsmen, and much else, which instantly earns him the displeasure of the Republican grandees (particularly the one who is nominally married to his lover) but catches the interest of increasing numbers of voters, leading to a dramatic conclusion to the election.

There are several particularly intense incidents: Quinn's opening speech, where he attacks vested political interests like the ones that have just nominated him; his gathering of a diverse group of trusted advisers; a confrontation with black radicals in Quinn's home town (which sounds a bit like my grandmother's home town of Plainfield); and a fatal car accident which Quinn refuses to allow his team to cover up. The author's tone towards lefties and feminists is a bit wearyingly snide (not to mention New Jersey, "a corridor of swampy weather and toadstool habitations that called itself a state"), but apart from that it's a real page-turner.

Of course, a book like this is always going to be partial wish-fulfillment. (See my list of Pope books; was Hadrian the Seventh the orignial Mary Sue?) But Knebel mounts a sharp critique from the liberal Right (a species that barely exists these days) of conventional American political wisdom, and challenges the reader to wonder how change might come? Things have now got worse, of course; I strongly recommend this recent article from The Atlantic, How American Politics Went Insane for a review of what has gone wrong, mostly since this book was written.

Apart from the death of the liberal Right, there are other major differences between how politics happened in 1972 and how it happens today. The most striking is that there was no twenty-four hour news cycle. The press corps did indeed follow the candidates around, but they were print journalists with their early evening deadlines; TV was much more cumbersome and had to be carefully arranged in advance. Minor gaffes by Quinn and his campaign staff are laughed off in a cordial way by all concerned, rather than becoming the focus of faux outrage by media talking heads. There is no chance that a candidate's love affair with a married Congresswoman could evade scrutiny today for as long as Quinn gets away with it in this book. (There is a sub-plot with a sex tape of which there is only one copy.)

Another point that hit me was that the only mention of TV debates is a brief reference to Kennedy/Nixon in 1960, with the strong implication tha that experiment would never be repeated. Debates are now of course an immovable part of the process, but we tend to forget that rather than 1960 that has only been the case since 1976, when Gerald Ford killed his own chances of re-election by mis-speaking about Eastern Europe. (Ford, who was the 1976 Republican candidate in real life, was also something of a dark horse given that in 1972 he was the fading House Minority Leader).

It's irresistible to compare the fictional 1976 scenario of Dark Horse with the real situation forty years after, where one insurgent from outside the party leadership came within a few hundred delegates of capturing the Democratic nomination, and another insurgent actually is the Republican nominee. Knebel's Quinn is closer in policy to Trump than Sanders, but has several redeeming points: he values intellectual input and thoughtful policy-making, he instinctively grasps the importance of reaching much wider than the white male demographic and challenges his own party on race and gender issues (even if he doesn't end up where we might want him to), and he doesn't tell lies. Immigration is a second or third generation issue, and the terrorists are domestic insurgents neutralised by negotiation. I would probably still have supported Quinn's Democratic opponent if I'd had a vote in this fictional 1976, but I would have found it a tough choice. Read the book for yourself, and see what you think. show less

This could have been written today. It is as timely now as it was in 1962, maybe more so. The military is planning to take over the government. Due to the eye of Colonel Jiggs Casey who questions some things he sees in his role as the director of the Joints Staff, he goes to the President with his thoughts. This is the story of how the President prevents a Constitutional crisis.

This is a fast-paced political thriller. I could not put it down as the week went by. I was on the edge of my seat show more to see what would happen. The characters are good. The President is shown philosophizing at times as to what he, as President, should and needs to do--often alone. I am amazed at how this was kept secret for as long as it was--on both sides. Well worth the read. show less