The Coup

[question everything]

I enjoyed this review so much that decided to post it here - qe

The Wall Street Journal

The Capital of Comedy
By KYLE SMITH
July 13, 2007; Page W5

(snip)

"The Coup," by Playboy managing editor Jamie Malanowski, out-Buckleys Christopher Buckley with its foul-mouthed honchos, twisted strivers and snaky reporters, all of them slightly less deserving of respect than their counterparts in real life (or so one hopes). The plot springs from the exasperated ambition of Godwin Pope -- wonderful sanctimony in that name -- a software mogul who, caught by a passing wave of outsider adulation, finds himself running for president.

Pope flames out in debate, though, because his folksy rival, Jack Mahone, answers one point with the catchphrase, "How come there's no almonds in my chocolate bar?" This riposte wins a campaign-altering laugh and disqualifies the puzzled Pope for the office of chief executive on the grounds of insufficient knowledge of Hershey's TV commercials. Pope, bored, winds up as Mahone's vice president but not his friend, all the while carefully storing his humiliation. Glancing at the characters around him at a ritually dull party, Pope conceives in a flash a plan that could result in the impeachment of the president, who has done nothing wrong, and give Pope a promotion.

The one-man coup is so fiendishly plausible that explaining it would give away the central pleasure of Mr. Malanowski's fast-paced and entertaining fable. But even if "The Coup" didn't offer such machine-tooled plotting, it would be a delight for its punchy dialogue and such cheerfully sordid characters as Maggie, the "shimmering" reporter who is accustomed to getting her scoops in bed and, having been caught out, is given one more chance by a disgusted boss. "Half the leaders in the Middle East kept your panties as a souvenir," says the editor accusingly. Maggie mutters in return, "It's just not true." But she is merely thinking, Mr. Malanowski observes, "that no empirical investigation would ever show that half the leaders in the Middle East, an exact 50 percent, had kept her panties as a souvenir. Hell, to a lot of those kinds of meetings in those years, Maggie hadn't even worn panties."

"The Coup" is savvy on the sophistication of modern polling techniques. At one point the president is told that "fifty-eight percent think you should resign, sixty-five percent say you should be impeached, and sixty-six percent say both." The novel is also clear-eyed about the way great legislation is made: "You don't bribe these people to do something," a mogul explains. "You go to jail for that. What you got to do is figure out how to give them money all year long, then maybe they think of you when your issue comes up. One gift, one time -- that's bribery. Lots of gifts over a long time -- that's politics." In such an atmosphere, Godwin Pope is not some outlier up to no good but a familiar species of smooth opportunist, part of the fauna of Washington's peculiar habitat.



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