HOH’s One-Minute Recess: Creative Fiction
Next week marks the release of “O: A Presidential Novel,” an anonymously written, fictitious tale of an American president who is strikingly similar to Barack Obama.
While political types all over town struggle to figure out who wrote the book — and pray that they don’t make an appearance in it — HOH took time to thumb through the novel and see how Members of Congress fared.
Turns out Capitol Hill doesn’t play much of a role. The novel focuses primarily on O’s campaign, and there are only a handful of passages that deal with Congress.
For instance, late in the novel the president meets with Republican leaders from both the House and Senate to discuss tax cuts. Sound familiar? In true partisan fashion, the three men go back and forth over where to have the meeting. O would like to hold it in the residence, while the Members want to meet in the Cabinet Room and bring their staff, an idea that the president shoots down.
During the back and forth, O’s top adviser, Avi Samuelson, instructs his deputy to tell the leadership team: “He wants to make them an offer on the tax cuts … If they’re too afraid to come here without bringing the Village People with them, he’ll announce it in the Rose Garden.”
Burn!
Beyond that, Congress is barely mentioned in this no-holds-barred story.
While the author’s identity is a closely guarded secret, publisher Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster does hint the writer “has been in the room” with Obama.