Exactly what Vice Presidents of the United States are supposed to do (and not do) always has been something of a political and constitutional mystery. As little as possible, is the recent election’s hint. But even in more demanding times the sanitized quip attributed to Texas’s John Nance (“Cactus Jack”) Garner, FDR’s first VP, that the office wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit, seemed the unvarnished truth of the matter. The surmise is that, besides presiding over the Senate and hoping for a tie vote so he can break it, the Vice President need only spend his time as he will and wait—in the event something dreadful befalls the President, something like death or impeachment.

Who would notice if the Vice President disappeared for awhile? Say, for six months?

These are the plausible questions premised in the most entertaining political novel of the past year. The Body Politic, written by veteran political journalist and PR man Victor Gold and novelist, editor, and chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities Lynne Cheney. The breezy clip of the narrative and language, the insouciance of the dialogue, and the outrageous audacity of the story gain their sure-handedness and verisimilitude from two expert White House insiders. After all, while an authority on life inside the beltway in her own right, Lynne Cheney is also the wife of Congressman Dick Cheney (Republican of Wyoming), who served as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. And Victor Gold was a speechwriter for Spiro Agnew and George Bush in days past.

In one of his nonpresiding moments, it seems, the novel’s imaginary Vice President Bully Vandercleve suffers fatal carnal arrest while enjoying the companionship of network TV anchorwoman Romana Clay. She is visiting for an evening in the Vice President’s townhouse while wife Cissy Vandercleve is out of the city. The richest politician in America, former governor of New York and three times a candidate for the presidency. Bully Vandercleve was about to be dumped from the Republican ticket. So he had taken the weekend off to collect himself, to prepare his withdrawal statement, and to salve a wounded ego when the untoward event occurred. With Bully now dead in the bed, Romana won’t leave the townhouse until the Secret Service agents assigned to the Vice President are called away from the entrances. She telephones Frank Lee (the Vice President’s press secretary) to let him know what has happened and to gain help in finding a way to keep things quiet.

Thus the tale begins. At 0445 hours Frank Lee telephones the President’s chief of staff through Army Signal’s secure system to let him know that the lame duck Vice President is already a dead duck, only to be curtly rebuffed and told to come to the White House at seven—if the matter still seemed important at that more civilized hour. A cover-up begins that is intended to last only 48 hours and through the next Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. But it goes on, and on, and on through the Super Tuesday primaries and the national election itself.

Eventually it all ends with justice being done. Frank Lee’s letter from the “Prison of the Stars” in Allentown, Pennsylvania, dated about one year after the townhouse scene, concludes the book. It explains Operation Avis, as it’s called (“Hertz” is the code name for the President), to an inquisitive New Orleans correspondent, Ms. Gwendolyn Dolittle. Femme fatale Romana Clay, Frank Lee explains to Ms. Dolittle, “resigned as TV network correspondent when Avis scandal broke. Later wrote best-selling book, All the Vice President’s Men, soon to be released as motion picture starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. Frequently appears as guest host on David Letterman show.”

What happened between townhouse and penitentiary is too much fun to ruin by telling more here. Jack Anderson is quoted as thinking that “Gold and Cheney have written what may be the ultimate Washington satire.” They surely have written the most hilarious political novel of the season.

Sandoz_Review

[The Body Politic, by Victor Gold and Lynne Cheney (New York: St. Martin’s Press) 213 pp., $15.95]