Author: Christopher Buckley
Publisher/Year: Twelve, 2008
Synopsis: The unpopular President of the United States is unable to get his Supreme Court nominees past the senator who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Dexter Mitchell. Frustrated, he outmaneuvers Mitchell by nominating Pepper Cartwright, a judge on a television reality show. She's so popular that her nomination breezes through the Senate. Once on the court, she begins an affair with the chief justice. Mitchell is so undone by her nomination that he leaves the Senate and takes a role on a television show where he plays a fictional president. He becomes so popular that he runs for the presidency for real. The election is so close that it ends up before the Supreme Court.
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The New York Times
"His villains are Washington’s ideologues, left and right, whose principles always boil down to self-regard. Buckley’s heart belongs to the outsiders, outcasts and mavericks who see through all the spin. Each of his novels may be as light as air, but bit by bit they’re building up into a significant social portrait, the beginnings of a vast Comédie-Washingtonienne."
The Washington Post
"You don't read a Buckley novel for the depth of character development."
Christian Science Monitor
"It is more silly than sleek satire, more sophomoric than sophisticated, late-night stand-up jokes."
Los Angeles Times
"Buckley is too witty not to give us some of those luscious moments that force us to laugh at something we know we shouldn't, like the chief justice of the United States arguing case law with Pepper as she discovers him trying to hang himself above the table in the justices' conference room."
