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2020 AN ELECTORAL ILIAD by Douglas Clouatre

2020 AN ELECTORAL ILIAD

by Douglas Clouatre

Pub Date: Feb. 3rd, 2020
Publisher: Self

A brash billionaire launches an unlikely bid for the presidency in a political satire that’s clearly modeled on the 2016 campaign season.

U.S. Sen. Candace Chaney is widely considered to be an “unbeatable” candidate in both the Democratic presidential primaries and the general election, where she faces a gathering class of potential Republican opponents. She’s the imperious head of a campaign organization known as the “Chaney machine,” which has seemingly boundless financial resources. Despite the fact that her “closets are packed with skeletons,” a partisan press corps handles her with kid gloves, and only seems prepared to present her with “flaccid questions” during press conferences. However, the apparent inevitability of her ascendancy to the Oval Office is challenged by a political novice: billionaire businessman John Fremount. Despite his distinct lack of political experience, he manages to recruit political consultant Chandler Bering to be his campaign manager by boldly pledging to spend no less than $250 million on his presidential run. Fremount sets his sights on the Democratic nomination, and although he’s initially dismissed as an unserious competitor, he manages to win the primary in South Carolina—and a then a successive string of primaries in other states, prompting Chaney to accuse him of electoral fraud. (Apparently, Fremount owns a stake in the company that manufactures the primaries’ electronic voting machines.) With this setup, Clouatre cheekily parodies the presidential election of 2016, but with a twist: Chaney, who’s obviously modeled on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is depicted as woodenly unlikable and endlessly corrupt, while Fremount, the stand-in for Donald Trump, isn’t portrayed as a bumbling buffoon, but as an uncommonly sly political operator.

The author also tweaks other significant details in order to avoid a retread of the events that he mines for farcical humor. For example, Chaney’s husband, Brad, is a vice president, with none of the mercurial talent of President Bill Clinton—although Brad does have an appetite for philandering. Also, in Clouatre’s telling, it’s the Chaneys who forge a suspiciously friendly relationship with the Russian government, and who use their namesake foundation to cozy up to dictators in exchange for massive charitable donations. The author has a knack for extracting comedy from realistic hyperbole; his exaggeration is just grand enough to elicit guffaws but modest enough to retain a sense of verisimilitude. For example, another senator pursues climate “denialists” with the implacable zeal of a true believer, likening those who stray from scientific consensus to Holocaust skeptics. However, Clouatre has an exasperating tendency to deeply bury readers in detail, which becomes onerous to manage. He also shows much more interest in conjuring up characters—and the novel’s cast is legion—than he is in carefully developing them; indeed, new players pop up with exhausting frequency. At times, the drama lags, as well, as the author presents commentary from political news shows at length; one sometimes gets the feeling that one is reading a Politico article that stubbornly refuses to end.

An enjoyably unconventional sendup of the 2016 election that loses steam as it goes on.