THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501240498
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GEORGE HEBERT
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
FATHER's DAY
JOHN CALVIN BATCHELOR
Henry Holt. 528 pp. $23.
PART HAIR-CURLING fiction, part constitutional critique, John Calvin Batchelor's Father's Day works best in the first role, though the plot has its unconvincing moments.
The constitutional centerpiece of the novel is the 25th Amendment, with its provision for the vice president of the United States to take over as acting president should the president formally declare himself unable to perform his duties. Batchelor's futuristic horror story involves just such an incapacitated chief executive, the victim of severe depression, elected in 2000.
President Theodore Jay's attempt to return to power, using the terms of the amendment that went into effect in l967, runs into a hard-bitten, devious scheme by acting President Thomas Edison ``Shy'' Garland to challenge the reinstatement.
Garland and a Washington cabal called EXCOM also have a backup plan (code name: ``Father's Day'') providing for the assassination of President Jay should the procedural challenge in Congress, as certain as success seems, somehow fail. The killing and coup would be carried out through blind military obedience to Garland's orders.
Some sexual shenanigans are a believable part of the conspiracies and counter-conspiracies. In other ways, too, the author knows how to keep us glued to the pages, as proved in his seven previous books, including The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica, with its typically fanciful theme.
In Father's Day, there are enough electronic gadgetry, national-security apparatus and insider knowledge of Washington's ways to satisfy any political/military buff. Surprise developments abound, as human contrariness upsets cold calculations. The writing is lean, exciting. The story is a natural for the movies; Cinergi Productions has already bought the rights.
But high drama was clearly not the be-all and end-all for the author. Batchelor never lets us forget that he is worried about that 25th Amendment and the problems he sees as built in - chiefly the possibility of two ``presidents'' giving orders at the same time and of a power grab if enough unscrupulous officials decide to gang up against orderly process.
To give his case weight, Batchelor demands suspension of disbelief here and there. The opinion polls consulted by Garland indicate that people suspect, but are willing to condone, the violence the acting president is doing to their republic. And we are also asked to accept as brainwashed robots a number of intelligent military officers, even a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and many people in their commands.
One result: The ending is highly contrived and pretty messy in the knotting up of various loose ends. A lot messier, some readers may well conclude, than the targeted provisions of the 25th Amendment.
- MEMO: George Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB