Customer Reviews

The People's Choice: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A well-written, very funny book. Subtle satire and laugh-out-loud scenes co-exist in this thought-provoking novel which digs up the underside of the Electoral College system and turns it over so we can see it in all its so-called-glory.

I've given copies of this book to several people, all of whom have been inspired by it to go read the Constitution of the United States, to see just how plausible the plot is. That's not a bad effect for a book to have on people.

In any case, whether it makes you think or not, it is undeniably a very funny book with unforgettable characters and situations. The writing is fine: realtively fluent and unobtrusive. And Jeff Greenfield has a very good eye for the ridiculous, while maintaining a high level of compassion for people who are doing the best they can.

Definitely recommended in an election year.

While covering Campaign 2000 late last October, I loaned this book to my boss, who started it... and then, after Election Day, was unable to finish it because Greenfield's imagined fiasco was too close to reality. (In fact, Greenfield said that what happened in the 2000 election put this book to shame.)
Greenfield is television's smartest and most knowledgable commentator about elections, and this comedic novel about the Electoral College -- imagining what might happen if, following the president-elect's death, the electors decided they did not want to make the vice president-elect president -- is full of great historical tidbits. Greenfield is at his best, and seems to be enjoying himself the most, where filling pages with anecdotes about electoral wrinkles in the past. That's where the book shines.
As for the story itself, it is a bit thin, and the ending is less than satisfying. But, especially with the renewed (but now-waning) interest in the Electoral College, this book is a fun read.

Jeff Greenfield is not primarily a fiction author by trade, and it shows in this effort. While he occasionally comes up with laugh-out-loud funny scenarios, he is more often than not doing workman's duty to fill out a fairly convoluted plot about what would happen if the president-elect died before the electoral college members officially cast their ballots. Only some of the characters are very interesting, and none are particularly complex.

Greenfield is at his best when he describes the news media covering the politics beat, and the novel is ultimately successful for its target audience of political news junkies. At times, the characters engage in unbelievable and dry conversation designed to let Greenfield speak directly to the reader and set up his various premises--but the language is exactly the sort of dull, mind-numbing analysis of minutiae that politics fans love to watch and spew. To that extent, one could say the book works as satire, but it is clearly not meant as such. Greenfield has written the kind of book he would like to read, I expect. Heavy on event-oriented plot and light on its stumbling and ineffective efforts at examining the people behind the story, the book is exactly like television news. If you enjoy CNN, give it a read.

As I write this the Florida Recount is still ongoing (Fri. Nov. 10, 2000). Having read this book, I was not only entertained, I became knowledgeable about all the trivial information about the electoral college, which now looks to be far less trivial than it used to be.

In fact in a conversation about the possibilities in this election, a reletive mused aloud, "I wonder if anyone has considered what would happen if an elected president was killed before he could take office."... I immediatly cited this book.

If ever a work of fiction could be considered a must read. For now, this would be that book

What happens when the victorious president-elect is killed in an accident 3 days after the election? Total pandimonium and hilarity. Remember, no one is REALLY elected until December, by the Electoral College, not the People. So here are 538 men and women with the legal power to elect the next president, nobody knows who they are and the presidency is essentially up for grabs! Could this really happen? Some lawyers say yes.

The characters are great satires of some living persons (we all know who is supposed to be the Very Reverend W. Dixon Mason don't we? and Teddy Block is a charicature of Dan Quayle) but most are made up. I can't tell you how funny this book is until you read it, and the story line is a real possibility.

I don't think the Electoral College needs abolishing...but that's just me, and it's a debate for another time.

I heard this book mentioned a number of times during that seemingly endless election we had not too long ago. I started out expecting yet another "political thriller"--Primary Colors left a bad taste in my mouth, and most other such books were spy novels disguised as political novels.

"The People's Choice" does suffer from some of those things that other political novels do. One glaring similarity is the number of characters used in the book. Nearly all political books feel the need to introduce dozens of characters, lest their campaign atmosphere seem inauthentic. TPC is no exception. No character is ever flushed out; before one is introduced, another one has to be rammed through so the author can get them all in. Greenfield is not alone in this; Primary Colors did it too.

Greenfield also suffers in his novel writing. One device I found particularly irritating was the sudden, if not exactly frequent, shifts from third to first person. They are cordoned off by chapter, thankfully, but some rather distracting "explanations and history lessons" are inadvertently added in. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, much of this info, and the dialogue from the characters, seems to be of the "hey! here's an interesting anecdote I learned in grad school! Let's work it in!" variety.

With all this, though, the book is pretty good. Admittedly, it gets better as you go along; the first chapter is appalingly bad; the second chapter is pretty good; and the third is excellent. Surprisingly, as the procedural mechanisms are slowly realized, the suspense gets better. It also has one of the most fun--if not believable--endings I've ever seen in such a book.

The book is done in fun, of course, but the facts are straight and presented nicely. It's obvious that Greenfield has an anti-electoral college bent, but it's not so overt as other reviewers have said; in fact, it's only directly touched on briefly at the end. The dialogue is fun, if not real-life, and the last third of the book is pretty fast-paced, interesting, and holds up with the best. If you can slog through the first chapter, the rest falls into place; it's worth it.

As political novels go, "The People's Choice" doesn't compare to the greats like "The Woody" by Peter Lefcourt or "Thank You for Smoking" by Christopher Buckley. That said, it's not a complete waste of time either.

The real problem is in the writing. Jeff Greenfield is a fairly competent political commentator, but he's not a novelist. The pacing is a bit off throughout and the dialogue is so bad it's funny. The book, however, is laugh-out-loud funny in places and never insults the reader, both qualities that make it worth reading despite the style and structural flaws.

All that said, it's not a bad read. Greenfield spins an enjoyable yarn about what could happen if the President-Elect dies before the Electoral College casts its votes in December. While some of the events that transpire stretch the reader's imagnination, he roasts many current political players, especially the Rev. Jesse Jackson. It is also timely reading, considering the events of 2000. While not the same scenerio, much of the discussion about the Electoral College matches what the country experienced last November and December. (Of course, Greenfield used his perch on CNN to plug the book shamelessly last year!)

Even though Greenfield is wrong in wanting to cast aside the Electoral College and its role in the selection of the President, "The People's Choice" is still a good read. Get the book, take it to the beach and enjoy. Just don't expect great literature.

Jeff Greenfield is best known as a political commentator for ABC. He uses his enormous experience to craft an intriguing yarn which is basically about how the Electoral College works. Dry subject, great book. Some of the characters are thinly-veiled caricatures of real people, and it was great fun guessing who was who (Avi DuPois is a great name for Limbaugh, but is the "Distinguished Commentator" supposed to be Brinkley or George Will?). It's all too believable that something like what's in the book could happen. Must-read for all politics junkies.

I'm not usually one to read so-called "Washington" novels, whose plots revolve around politics and its attending infrastructure. This one, however, is probably worth the short time it takes to read. It bears the subtitle "A Cautionary Tale" and rightfully so, for the novel is simply a fictional device to deliver the message that the American system of employing an electoral college is seriously flawed and outdated. With workmanlike prose, Greenfield presents a tale in which a president-elect is killed in the time between the popular election and the actual election by the college of electors. What is exposed is the complete failure of the system to account for any such anomaly as first one elector refuses to vote for VP-elect to fill the dead president-elect's position. Greenfield manages to make all the normal Washington-insider dealings, media coverage, and so forth, somewhat interesting and entertaining. Check it out, you might learn something.

then this book is for you. it is amazing how mr. greenfield introduced the constitutional complexities of the electoral college a full five years before we would encounter similar trouble in real life. this isn't a carbon copy of the 2000 presidential election but it raises many issues that were confronted last fall. mr. greenfield does not drown the reader in lawyerspeak and legal manipulation. he introduces us to characters who live and breathe the same patriotic values every day in america. this book was well written and it won't take two months to figure out who will be the president.