Advise and Consent Redux

The coming confirmation battles over the nomination of Strip-search Sammy Alito to the Supreme Court will make a great story.

Look at the cast of characters.  A weakened, frustrated, angry and from all accounts increasingly unfocused President.  His desperate, conniving Vice-President.  His even more desperate and conniving Right Hand Man.  A weepy, emotionally unstable Senate Majority Leader cracking under the strain of his own financial scandals.  The aging, humiliated once too often chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee forced to choose yet again between standing up for his avowed principles or caving in to the bullying of his Right Wing colleagues.  The seemingly mild-mannered Minority Leader who is cagey as all get out and solid steel.

And what a plot!

Will the supposedly pro-choice Republicans stick with the President on this one?  Will the Democrats find the courage to stand up with their cagey, steely Leader?  Will they filibuster?  Will the Majority Leader go nuclear?  Will the "compromise" hold?  Will they blow up the Senate?

And, in the background, quietly, inexorably, Patrick Fitzgerald grimly prepares to bring Scooter Libby to trial and the whole lying gang into court to testify about how they ginned up a war and set out to cover up their evil schemes.

It would make a great novel, and almost certainly such a great novel will never be written.

Continued over at The American Street.

Comments

[Campaspe]

It's a little like Advise and Consent.

Big difference, though, in that many of the characters in that novel and movie have principles. Not to mention intellect.

There aren't very many great American political novels. The Brits have Trollope, and we have ... who? This is begging for a major talent. Hell, I bet even Damon Runyon could have made hay with this. He wrote great pieces about a few murder trials.

And of course, it has a more or less preordained, depressing ending to give the whole thing more gravitas.

[Linkmeister]

Babbitt? The Jungle? Ida Tarbell's History of Standard Oil?

Since Bérubé has so little to do, why don't we commission him to write it? ;)

[coturnix]

And several subplots are in the background: former House Majority Leader on trial. Former Senate Majority Leader backstabbing the current Senate Majority Leader. Roughly 100 Senators considering a run for the White House and acting accordingly. A prominent lobbyist in deep sh*t and he's connected to everybody. Press mad at being lied to exacts revenge. White House Press Secretary about to get the boot.

All those threads will connect in Volume II.