NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID

When I first started this blog, when dinosaurs ruled the earth way back in 2012, I had several unwritten rules that I have tried to follow when posting here. First, no religion. Second, no politics. Third, no griping about my job. And fourth, I have always tried to never say anything bad about someone who is still alive. 

This post marks the first time I've deliberately broken any of those rules but because of the subject matter at hand, I'm afraid a departure from the norm is necessary. 

So if rules are going to be broken, it's in for a penny, in for a pound. I'm still not going to gripe about my job (I'll post plenty after I retire) but it's time to go on the record about a few things. First, I am a Christian. Judy and I are proud members of First Presbyterian Church in Elgin, Texas. Judy has been a member for many years. I didn't officially join until 2017 and I'm currently in the middle of a three year term as a church elder. Second, I'm a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama twice, Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and Hilary Clinton in the last presidential election. 

Your mileage on these things my vary and if this confession causes any one to cease reading this blog, so be it. I'm not going to preach or try to convert anyone to my point of view but I am going to state for the record that I believe our country is in the hands of a madman. 

That belief is held by others, including some of the fine folks at Knopf Doubleday who reprinted Fletcher Knebel's 1965 political thriller NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID last fall. After all, the central conceit of the book is plainly stated on the cover: "What would happen if the President of the U.S.A went stark-raving mad?" What was the stuff of fantasy, fodder for a paperback thriller in 1965, is now, in the minds of many, myself included, a cold hard fact in 2019. 

When Donald Trump was sworn in, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, to give him a chance to see what he could do because, after all, he was the duly elected president. That chance totally evaporated the very next day when he spouted lies about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, lies he forced poor Sean Spicer to reiterate in his first press conference. 

And it's been downhill ever since. 

NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID is a book that caught my eye when I was a young and adventurous reader in junior high school in the early '70s. I bought a copy, started reading it and quickly lost interest in it. Why? Because it was simply too "adult" for my reading abilities at the time. Oh, it wasn't a dirty book in the least. It just dealt with characters and situations that were slightly more mature than the usual pulp fiction that I was reading at the time. My literary eyes were bigger than my literary stomach, if I can mix metaphors. NIGHT became one of those books, like Martin Caidin's MAROONED (which was published in paperback by Bantam at roughly the same time), that I would have to wait many, many years to finally read and appreciate. 

Turns out that Fletcher Knebel was remarkably prescient way back in 1965. First, he gives us a president that is suffering from paranoid delusions ("they" and "them" are out to get him), has grandiose plans for restructuring global alliances (he wants to form a union between the U.S, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland with himself at the head and vows to use force to make the rest of Europe join in), sees no problem with ordering the F.B.I. to illegally wiretap and record every phone call in the United States and, to top it off, has a meeting scheduled with the Russian president in which he could spill the beans about his mad plans.  

SPOILER ALERT Second, he gives us a president that resigns the office. Remember, this was almost a decade before Richard Nixon was forced to resign. And third, just for good measure, he uncannily has a Supreme Court Justice named Cavanaugh as one of the supporting players. 

The story centers around Senator Jim MacVeagh of Iowa who is picked by President Mark Hollenbach to be his running mate when he runs for re-election. The current vice president became involved in a real estate scandal and is going to be removed from the ticket. Mac Veagh is thrilled at first but as Hollenbach takes the young lawmaker into his confidence, the cracks in the presidential facade begin to show. 

MacVeagh desperately tries to find corroborating evidence to prove his theory that Hollenbach has gone mad. His investigation draws the attention of the F.B,I and the Secret Service who suspect MacVeagh poses a threat to the president. MacVeagh is even thought to be unbalanced himself. But eventually he finds a consortium of allies including the Secretary of Defense, the Speaker of the House, the chairman of the Democratic Committee, a powerful Washington attorney, the aforementioned Supreme Court Justice, the president's personal physician and others. But the trouble is, even if Hollenbach is crazy, what can they do about it? As their late night meeting continues to spiral towards the unthinkable, enter President Hollenbach for a final chapter showdown. 

NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID is, of course, fiction. But it's a compelling story well told and offers plenty of food for thought about the current state of our nation and the Constitutional crisis that we find ourselves in. Knebel offers a solution to the problem in the pages of his book.

 Alas, no such solution appears to be at hand in the real world. 

Recommended.