Stark Raving Mad Like A Fox

Little something from the culture corner today.

A novel, entitled "Night Of Camp David", features an unhinged American president who falls victim to his own paranoia and conspiratorial fantasies as people around him struggle to rein in his worst impulses.

Ring any bells, there, Alexander Graham?

Here's one plot twist you might not be expecting, though.

The novel was written, and originally published, in 1965.

Now, more than 50 years after it was released, “Night of Camp David” is getting a new life. Later this month, Vintage Books, a Penguin Random House imprint, is re-releasing the novel, as a paperback, e-book and audiobook.  

The publisher isn’t shying away from drawing parallels between the novel and our current overheated political climate, with a dramatic black cover flap that reprises the tagline on the original novel: 

“What Would Happen if the President of the U.S.A. Went Stark Raving Mad?”

“It’s got the perfect balance of escapism and that haunting touch of reality,” said Anne Messitte, publisher of Vintage Books.

Messitte said she first became aware of the novel in early September, when Rachel Maddow spoke about it at length on MSNBC, and noted the eerie similarities between the fictional plot and the biggest political story of the day: the anonymous op-ed in The New York Times by a Trump official, who wrote that members of the administration were working to undermine the president’s agenda and had considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him.

“Dystopian thriller books and movies like that invite us as Americans to imagine what we might do with a presidency gone that haywire,” Maddow said. “It turns out, that all might have been good training because today’s news invites us Americans to consider the same.”

Interest in the novel soared. The presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted about it. In an interview with The New York Times, Bob Woodward mentioned he had recently reread it. Used copies on Amazon were priced at more than $100. “I read this book a long time ago back in the late 1960s,” a reviewer wrote on Amazon. “Today, we should just change its name to a “Night of Mar-A-Largo.” It’s the same plot only the characters are different.”

The novel centers on a young Iowa senator who grows worried about the president’s mental health when he is summoned to Camp David in the middle of the night. During deranged monologues, the president — a liberal Democrat named Mark Hollenbach — rants about his perceived political enemies and imaginary plots against him. He rails against the media and accuses a newspaper columnist of leading a “conspiracy” to discredit him. He tries to undo America’s longstanding alliances with Western Europe, and arranges “a high-level conference with the Soviet Premiere that could damage our national security,” according to The New York Times review. (Bizarrely, there’s even a Supreme Court justice in the novel whose last name is Cavanaugh.)

I read this novel when I was 14. Back in the day, the "political thriller" was the flavor of the month. Titles such as "Seven Days In May" (co-written by Fletcher Knebel, the author of "Night Of Camp David") and "Fail Safe", among others, showed up frequently on the best seller lists and many found their way to the big screen.

I had forgotten "Night Of Camp David" until news of the re-release surfaced on social media, the memory of it triggered by the news article featuring a picture of the actual cover from the 1965 paperback edition, an edition I owned for a long time...a long time ago.

Obviously, you don't need to be a scholar or political expert to recognize the parallels in the fictional President named Hollenbach and the truth is stranger than fiction president named Trump.

That said, with the perspective I enjoy from having been both a fourteen year old reading a "what if" thriller in 1965 and, fifty years later, an experienced political observer living smack dab in the middle of a real life playing out like it was a "what if" thriller, it occurs to me that there's a critical difference between a "President" with diagnosable psychological illness and a demagogue who, while arrogant, spoiled rotten and convinced of his own infallibility, is more likely nothing more, or less, than an opportunist with a world class ability at pulling off the con.....by flawlessly accomplishing the two things necessary to pull off the con:

You scare gullible (read: uninformed, often uneducated) people into believing any/many demons are at the door.....

And, then, convince people that you are the only hope they have of defeating the demons.

In it's fun, entertaining form, it's a Professor Harold T. Hill hustling people to buy 76 Trombones they can't really afford ("because....we got trouble.....right here in River City....)

In it's current form, it's an arrogant, spoiled rotten, self convinced infallible, getting even with the black President who made fun of him at dinner a few years back, who NEVER truly wanted to be President, let alone believe he would ever ACTUALLY get elected.......whose primary psychological problem is his total and absolute inability, therefore, refusal, to ever, ever.............ever...........be wrong about, responsible or accountable for anything....ever......while incapable of hearing (let alone accepting) ANY CRITICISM OF ANY KIND AT ANY TIME............EVER...........the absolute WORST character/personality for somebody in the job he decided to "play around" at getting......

There's an element missing in Fletcher Knebel's 1965 novel that is in our ears, eyes and faces on an hourly basis in 2018.

The fictional president's psychosis is known to a few, in particular, one, the protagonist of the novel, adding to the protagonist's list of challenges making the public aware of the danger......

This "real" president tweets his con man credentials to a global audience, 24/7.....

A friend and I have conversed frequently on the "he's mentally ill" riff being frequently cranked out by more and more every day folk as the Trump story plays itself out. Neither of us are trained or credentialed as mental health experts, but, instincts, even hunches, being what they are, we find ourselves in agreement on one educated guess.

We don't really believe that Trump is in the throes of madness.

That's giving him an air of Shakespearean drama that does a disservice to Shakespeare.

And drama.

We're also in agreement on the "ist" factor when it comes to hardy har-har Hamlet, here.

I was tempted to find a pun using Macbeth, but, as the first thing that popped to mind was MacDonald, I decided to err on the side of not slandering fast food that doesn't deserve the diss.

My pal and I agree that...  

Donald Trump is.....

...not a racist.....

...not a supremacist...

...not, really, even a "nationalist"

He is, in our opinion and you'd think to anyone with a working brain cell...

...a misogynist...

...a narcissist...

...and an egotist....

But more than any of the other "ists"....

He is an opportunist.

Often used as a five-dollar word that means con man.

If his "base" suddenly embraced minorities tomorrow, he'd fire his Cabinet and staff and replace them with blacks and Hispanics and Jews and women before end of business.

That's not stark raving mad.

That's just textbook playing to the crowd.

At least, in our book.