The Gridiron Club is one of the oldest, most unique literary organizations in Washington, DC. Much like the White House Correspondents ‘ Association, this mysterious, members-only party hosts an annual dinner where authors and politicians change funny barbs and increase their glasses in a heart of camaraderie. Custom dictates that the sitting president visits, making it a crucial fixture in Washington’s social and political calendar.
A fictitious account of this annual dinner features at the start of Fletcher Knebel’s 1965 novel, Night of Camp David, which is back in the cultural spotlight ( again ). This bestselling social thriller about a US leader spiralling into anxiety and delusion feels oddly pertinent in the era of Trump 2.0 because of its amazing ability to anticipate reality.
Everything appears to be regular as Knebel’s history gets underway. At the Gridiron team, Democrat President Mark Hollenbach, a likable Democrat who served in the Korean War, has really stepped up to speak. Before him remain” the aristocracy of America’s perfectly mixed political-industrial culture, the men who ran the political parties and the great corporations”.
Hollenbach sets his places on his political rivals after making a few playful rants against the media. He claims that the Republican party’s leadership is based on a short pause to taking a sip of water.
my capacity for seriousness is frequently mystifying me. The idea might be in what they say to one another. I’ve given the subject a lot of consideration, and I believe I’ve found a way to answer it.
Hollenbach, who is up for reelection, suggests the FBI become empowered to keep an involuntary touch on all phone in the country. We Democrats could discover what enigmatic material serves as the adhesive for Republicanism, and what they actually say to one another to make them so gloomy, with a permanent wiretap.
The crowd erupts in laugh, assuming Hollenbach is joshing. But he’s dangerous significant. He admits this to the novel’s main protagonist, Jim MacVeagh, an idealistic young senator from Iowa, when he afterwards invites him for a nightcap at Camp David, the lonely political retreat nestled in the Maryland mountains.
It would have to be done carefully, with great legal restraints and protection, naturally. However, no decent citizen would have a thing to worry about. It’s the hoodlums, the punks, the syndicate killers and the dope peddlers we’re after. Automatic wiretapping, aided by computers to store the telephone calls, would drive them all out of business.
MacVeagh can hardly believe what he’s hearing. He tries to understand the president, citing the danger that the vaguely Nixon-like scheme” could be an awful weapon for evil in the wrong hands.” Who knows what kind of man might be able to bring you success?
These pleas are deaf to ears. With a wave of his hand as he dismisses MacVeagh’s objections, Hollenbach switches the conversation to a topic he thinks is more pressing: his choice for vice-presidential running mate.
Hollenbach dangles a tantalizing carrot before MacVeagh, suggesting he might be the ideal candidate for the position, with a sly grin. Flattered but unsure, MacVeagh demurs. He is soon called back for another meeting, where it becomes alarmingly obvious that something is wrong with the president. He rants about nefarious journalists and insists there is” some kind of conspiracy afoot afoot discredit me in the eyes of the country.”
These minor grievances are only the start of his larger plans. With feverish intensity, Hollenbach unveils his vision to make America great again. He speaks of forging
the world’s most powerful core ever seen. Not just an alliance, but a union – a real union, political, economic, social – of the great free nations of the world.
At first, MacVeagh is unsure what he’s talking about. However, it turns out Hollenbach is referring to a takeover of America’s northern neighbour:
The mineral riches beneath her soil are incredible in size. … Believe me, Jim, Canada will be the seat of power in the next century and, properly exploited and conserved, her riches can go on for a thousand years.
Hollenback argues America also needs to take control of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland – by force if necessary. These predominately white nations” will give us the character and discipline we sadly lack”
MacVeagh is stunned by the president’s alarmingly erratic behaviour, messianic posturing and white supremacist rhetoric. He decides that he must take action. However, how can one confront the most powerful person on earth without being labeled a traitor? The reader begins to doubt MacVeagh as he searches for allies in Washington before it is too late.
A climate of dread
Although Night of Camp David is very much a product of its time, it also resonates in the here and now, especially in its prefiguration of some of Donald Trump’s more outrageous foreign policy pronouncements, like wanting to annex Greenland.
The political and socio-cultural climate in the 1960s was marked by a deep sense of suspicion. Many people were concerned about the cold war, fear of perceived subversion from within, and high-profile political assassinations.
In his influential 1964 essay” The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” historian Richard Hofstader poignantly captured the era. He suggests that American political life has long been influenced by conspiratorial theories and exaggerated fears about internal enemies in it.
Knebel’s novel, which appeared a few months after Hofstader’s study, delved directly into this mindset, creating an all too plausible scenario where the greatest threat to American democracy comes from the seat of highest office itself, rather than from a shadowy external adversary.
As seen in movies like” The Manchurian Candidate,” in which a decorated war veteran is unwittingly brainwashed into becoming a sleeper assassin, and” Seven Days in May,” which follows a Pentagon insider who uncovers a right-wing military coup against the leader of the free world, this climate of dread and distrust permeated 1960s popular culture.
Elsewhere, Stanley Kubrick’s” Dr. Strangelove” satirized the terrifying possibility of nuclear destruction, with the deranged figure of General Ripper embodying the fear of unstable leaders wielding absolute power. The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, fueled intense anxieties about the process of presidential succession.
What if a president in power suddenly became dangerously unstable, the question that Night of Camp David raised was profound and unsettling. And, more urgently, What could be done about it?
In fact, Knebel’s book was only published two years prior to the 25th Amendment‘s ratification, which clarifies procedures for removing a president who is deemed unable to discharge the office’s responsibilities. The amendment was passed as a direct response to the political chaos that followed the Kennedy assassination right away.
Different eras
Knebel was, in the words of JFK,” Washington’s most widely read and widely plagiarized” commentator. His book still has a lot to say about the fragility of our democratic institutions and the dangers of unchecked authority, whether read as a relic from the Cold War or as an urgent warning.
In addition, the contrast between Trump and Knebel’s fictional president highlights a significant contrast between their respective historical and political eras.
Despite his desire for a new world order, the president ultimately makes a choice in Night of Camp David that shows him to be oddly patriotic and scrupulous.
One simply can’t imagine such a scenario under Trump.
Hollenbach, for all of his delusions and grandiosity, still sees himself as acting in the nation’s best interest – however warped or dangerous his vision may be. Trump, on the other hand, operates with ruthless, transactional logic, focused above all on his power and survival.
Trump’s statements on international affairs, whether they rename the Gulf of Mexico or quote Napoleon to support his government’s purging, veer into the realm of the bizarre. However, his approach is more about calculated dominance than untrammelled paranoia.
When it comes to Trump, the issue is more with remorseless, calculated restructuring of institutions to serve his own goals.
In this regard, Night of Camp David may feel oddly quaint and antiquated, the narrative of which might strike the contemporary reader as a bit tame.
Its cast of characters, irrespective of party and persuasion, are ultimately driven by duty to the nation, where’s today’s political landscape in the United States is increasingly defined by ideological entrenchment and loyalty tests.
Knebel imagines a president’s instability as a crisis to be resolved. With Trump’s second coming, instability has itself become a governing principle.
Alexander Howard is the University of Sydney’s senior lecturer on the subject of writing and English.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.