Patriots [Kindle Edition]

In this review, I'm going to briefly compare and contrast two Davids who have each "crossed paths", one by moving to the right; the other, to the left. I'll then discuss Patriots in more detail.

Frum's Patriots is an over-the-top satire of Frum's views of the contemporary US Republican (and Conservative) movement. Just as talented playwright David Mamet has lurched to the right in recent years, Frum, a former speech-writer for George W. Bush, has lurched to the left.

The Mamet/Frum comparison is, I think, not entirely inapt. Both have chosen to examine what they each have viewed as the unravelling of American Culture. Mamet is unquestionably a better writer, though I tend to think Frum has a little more gravitas as a popular intellectual. Indeed, Frum's awkwardly titled (2000) book, How We Got Here: The 70's: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life -- For Better or Worse, is a clever and thoughtful look at the damaging [in Frum's view at the time] effects of the 1970's on America.

Mamet's first work of political non-fiction, The Secret Knowledge (2011) comes off as far more anecdotal, and somewhat angrier than Frum's best work (How We Got Here). This isn't to disparage Mamet's The Secret Knowledge (2011), but if I had to pick one book about the unravelling of American Culture from an intelligent conservative perspective, I'd probably pick Frum's 2000 work.

On fiction? No contest. Mamet, whether as a liberal or conservative, beats Frum hands down. Is that a fair comparison, though? Perhaps not. Some context though, for anyone who wishes to judge what my own biases and thoughts might be.

So: Patriots. An engaging book? Surprisingly, yes. Frum is a reasonably talented writer, and though Patriots falls short of his best work, he does have the excuse that his narrator is introduced as a lazy and unreliable scion of great wealth. There are one or two moments in editing, but no more (and perhaps fewer) than the typical well-produced book of today from a major publisher, and nothing indefensible.

Endless observations of food, wine and clothing come off as tiresome and superficial, but to give Frum credit, I think that is exactly his intent, though at times this is used as a tedious weapon to excoriate other characters, almost invariably conservatives.

Ignoring the political context, it's a passable, though unexceptional novel featuring an arc (or several) of failure, and one of redemption. Nothing revolutionary here, and certainly not as interesting as the 1959 Washington political novel, Advise and Consent, by Allen Drury.

And here we have a problem. If we snip out the politics, this is fairly dull stuff.

What of the politics? Frum, wisely, possibly on the advice of libel lawyers, or as a Harvard (1987) J.D., has veiled everyone in thinly disguised pseudonyms. It's not difficult to tell who Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbart and James Taranto are, but, yes, technically, they have different names. On that point, Taranto needs to get a better agent; he seems to come off as repetitive and hackish rather than (like the rest) frothingly vile in Frum's view.

And indeed these characters are uniformly frothing-at-the-mouth tiresome lunatics. "Ah!" I hear a liberal reader saying. "But that's exactly what those people are". Let's assume that's true for just a moment (I don't believe it is, but let's assume it). A book about such thinly sketched characters, unless you're buying it to feed into your own ideological pre-judgements, is... well... awfully tiresome.

A good character, especially the villain of the piece, should be well sketched. There should be a reason why the character is malign. We should be able to sympathize with the character and see him, or her as a human being, a man in full, with all the complexities that entails. Indeed, it's often best that unless the villain is a sociopath, he or she should convincingly believe that he or she is fighting for a righteous cause.

Frum executes this almost not at all. He has a brief revealing moment from a later employer of the protagonist that what the "Constitutionalist" (aka Republican) party is doing is just fine because it's what the "Nationalist" (i.e., Democratic) party used to do to them.

Apart from this rather jejune playground rationale, virtually all of Frum's conservative characters are cardboard caricatures, tiresome in their similarity. They love fancy food, free booze, surround themselves with token minorities, love trashing anyone in their way, and seem to have no other interests in life.

It's possible all of Frum's former friends and coworkers are like this. I think it highly unlikely, but even if it's true, it makes for terribly dull reading.

It also says something about Frum, if true.

Ultimately I admit to some bias. Frum loses a star in his astonishingly cruel and petty portrayal of conservative women, minorities, and the recently deceased.

It's not just lazy writing, it's cruel, and in enjoying other aspects of his first novel I feel sadly diminished given that cruelty and that pettiness.

Do I recommend you buy this? No. If you want to buy a Frum book, buy his work on the 1970's. Or go read anything -- anything at all -- by David Mamet.

Full disclosure: I do not and have not worked in government, politics, lobbying or any connected field, and I've never worked with Frum. I have exchanged one or two polite emails with him in the past -- when he worked for National Review -- and I think he is an insightful and intelligent man. I once, bizarrely, had lunch with his sister, a Canadian Senator (there were six others at the table though).

David Frum, best known for his work as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and coining the phrase "Axis of Evil", has written his first novel, a humorous, slyly satirical and apparently somewhat autobiographical book about how Washington does, and in most cases doesn't, work. While the book's main character is clearly not actually based on Frum, I would bet that several things that the protagonist witnesses in the book are true stories Frum experienced or heard about. While the Kindle version of the book has several editing and formatting issues, the book itself is actually very well written and shows that Frum has the ability to be a slightly more serious version of Christopher Buckley, whos Thank You for Smoking: A Novel I was reminded of several times as I ripped through Patriots.

If you follow politics, it's a great, fast read, and even if you don't, Frum cleverly tells the story from the 1st person view of Walter Sholtzky, a layabout heir to a mustard fortune who has failed at everything he's even done and has no knowledge of politics or much of anything else. Walter is a decent person, for a trust fund baby, though he is far from perfect. He is made to take a job in the office of Senator Hazen of Rhode Island, an old Consitutionalist (Frum's stand in for Republicans) and friend of his family. As Walter learns how Washington works, so do we. And Frum's versions of DC, despite the players having different names and the crisis taking place in different places, is a lot like ours: Rigid ideologues rail against any form of tax increases on "wealth creators", media figures declare the President un-American and corrupt as it suits their needs, and nearly everyone explains it all by saying they're just playing the game. There's even a tea party-esque "Trucker Protest".

Frum's manages to find a sympathetic side to just about everyone in the book. His contempt is focused squarely on the FOX News stand-in, Patriot News, and those who enable it. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Roger Ailes all have very specific stand-ins in at Patriot News, and Frum clearly does not like them. As the Ailes stand-in says, cooperation and bipartisanship doesn't get ratings and attention, partisan warfare and us vs them politics do. And this is how the story unfolds: a view of a pretty much itra-party battle over an economic package with blowback from a 10-year long war in Mexico also providing some intrigue to the story. The opposition party doesn't play a role in the book. It's a battle for the soul of one party that is moving in two different directions. Walter is tossed from one side to the other, sitting in and essentially listening in as the sides plot against each other.

Frum has a larger point to his novel: that the American conservative movement has lost it's way. The older intellectual vanguards have been replaced by talking heads who spew fake outrage and outright lies, a movement who's followers are manipulated by a cynical news organization to maximize profits and ratings at the expense of thoughtful discourse and honest debate. But the book is not wholly cynical, and Frum treats most of the characters as complex and mostly decent people. It's a book that makes you laugh but also has larger ideas that you will dwell on long after you put it down. I'm awarding the book 4 out 5 stars based on the fact that it could have used a bit more editing and it occasionally feels unnecessarily long. It's not a classic, but it is very, very good.

I like to read David Frum's blog and I had read the first 10 chapters at the Huffington Post already. So I bought this book the first day it was out and finished it in 2 nights. It's written in an engaging and easy to read style. I found some sloppy typos in the book and the constant reminders of the protagonist's great sex life with the perfect not-looking-for-a-rich-guy-but-dating-a-rich-guy girlfriend became somewhat annoying after a while.

Going through the book, I often wondered whether Frum wrote the book with different names first and then went through and did a Search/Replace on "Fox News" with "Patriot News" and "Republican Party" with "Constitutionalist Party" and so on. Some of the characters and lifted almost verbatim from the real world (like Glen Beck). It was interesting to read about the type of power play, behind the scenes machinations that drive life in politics in Washington.

My main gripe with the book (SPOILER ALERT) is that the ending was somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying. After working the whole book for a deficit reduction deal with higher taxes in order to balance the budget and pay down debt, the Republican, oops, sorry, Constitutionalist president instead caves into his own party's demands and slashes taxes instead. Then what? Life goes on? That's it? What about the crushing debt and budget and all that? Forgotten? It went away on its own? Aliens came down from space and paid it down?

Inquiring minds want to know.