Big Government

August 31, 1998
To say that Clinton White House veteran Erlich's characters are cardboard is not a criticism: this debut novel, a rollicking parody of current American political life, works like a puppet show. The Being There plot follows the elevation of naive incompetents through the self-serving machinations of soulless politicos. Many of the scenes are brilliantly absurd, as when one Senator Moss is eaten by an alligator while wooing a militant naturalist for campaign support, or when the campaign staff of ailing Senator Wheezle restricts media access because being in a coma "is usually perceived as a negative." There are hilarious lampoons of political double-think, e.g., the "universal daylight savings time initiative," a pork barrel for the electric companies, and the "equipment that doesn't work tax credit," baldly subsidizing businesses for giving away things they never needed in the first place. All the men in power speak like the puppet Punch, unashamedly full of themselves, generally to hilarious effect. ("No, it's absolutely legal," says one, "and we can always give the money back if we're caught.") On the other hand, Ehrlich is given to excessive exposition and summary narrative, as if he doubted the readers' ability to appreciate the satire in the action itself. Some interior monologues militate against the total effect, and, because the characters are so thin, it's sometimes too easy to confuse them for one another as the novel jumps from one crazy subplot to another. In the last few pages, Ehrlich tries to draw an uplifting moral that is not at all warranted by the horrific picture he has painted: everyone is for sale, and only fools and losers have scruples. Author tour; simultaneous Time Warner audio.

September 15, 1998
Imagine the U.S. Congress inflamed by upcoming elections when a string of unexpected events occurs: a sitting president resigns to go fishing, and two members of Congress cannot continue their campaigns. One aide, assigned to monitor a dingbat crusade for universal daylight savings time, vaults to the front lines as a candidate, while another aide's conscientious striving gets him within sneezing distance of a candidacy for himself. This is an extravagantly funny entry into the ranks of the Washington novel by a Clinton administration staffer. Silent on Whitewater and Lewinsky, he nevertheless reels through current sagas such as the story of the 114-year-old senator and the grisly death (with a tip of the hat to Carl Hiassen's Miami riffs) of Florida's senator. One of the sweet subtleties is Ehrlich's successful delivery of the traditional message of hope about the wacky but working American system of government, even as his nonstop silly-season stuff provokes tears of laughter. For all public libraries.--Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress, Falls Church, VA

September 1, 1998
If you think "our" Beltway bozos are bad, consider Ehrlich's. President Wade Hoak resigns after three years in office with $50 million from the business honchos he has served. Representative Ezra Wheedle (D-PA) is frustrated: he's waited 36 years to chair the National Economic Affairs Committee, but Idaho Representative Senior Younger Jr., age 114, refuses to die, and Wheedle can't be sure of reelection. Naive, incompetent geophysicist Dickie Vanderhaltz stumbles onto the staff of the Senate's Committee on Science and Engineering and turns a study of "universal daylight savings time" intended to please electric utilities into a movement linking gun-loving social Darwinists and consumer-product businesses that would sell more if the sun set later. When the senator who hoped to ride daylight savings into the White House falls prey to a Lake Okeechobee alligator, Vanderhaltz runs for the Senate, allied with a daylight savings presidential candidate, a televangelist/financial advisor. Entertaining, over-the-top satire from a four-year veteran of the Clinton administration. ((Reviewed September 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)