In 1996, in the middle of US election fever, a novel came from nowhere to take the publishing and political worlds by storm. Primary Colors went straight to Number 1 in the UK and went on to sell over one million hardbacks and two million paperbacks in its English language editions alone. Now in 2000, as US election fever builds once more, 'Anonymous', aka Joe Klein is back and set to repeat his success with a second brilliant novel.. In The Running Mate, Klein once again takes readers on a wickedly observant and compulsively entertaining journey behind the scenes of contemporary politics. Jack Stanton, now President Stanton, returns but this time the novel is about Senator Charlie Martin, a Vietnam War hero and hot political property. Facing an election year in this era of spin, marketing and vicious personal assaults, Martin is forced to confront the two biggest challenges of his life- a charismatic political opponent who has no scruples, and a dazzling, difficult woman who loves him, but is appalled by his life's work.Klein describes the novel as "being about the difficulties of being a politician and a human being at the same time.
Senator Charlie Martin, the slightly John McCain-like war hero of Joe Klein's
The Running Mate, thought getting blown up in Vietnam was tough, but presidential politics proves the uglier jungle battlefield. Charlie blows his challenge to the incumbent, Jack Stanton (the delightfully slimy protagonist of Klein's roman à clef about Clinton's 1992 campaign), by refusing to smear Stanton for his affair with his wife's stylist, "the Happy Hairdresser". Then he brushes a campaign worker's breast--by accident--and gets punched on TV by her irate dad. Charlie does, however, revive his career by springing a veteran named Mustafa from a Vietnamese prison, and soon he's on Stanton's shortlist for politicking to get an old war buddy named defence secretary. In this political novel par excellence, skeletons dance out of practically everybody's closet. Charlie's vivid trip back to Vietnam turns up a son he sired in a one-night stand; his wickedly droll, still healthy Southern press secretary is HIV positive; Mustafa has society re-entry problems; major politicians turn out to be closet pill heads, booze hounds, or rapists of staffers ("Apparently, she suffered an involuntary loss of her virginity in the Cannon Building"). Even Republicans hoard deadly secrets. And politics isn't about policies, it's about artful Machiavellian manoeuvres, back-stabbing, and feeding scandals to ignorant, arrogant press know-it-alls. (You can't say Klein lacks chutzpah!) Ornery but honest Charlie finds politics "becoming more noxious and also more sterile as the century staggered home". One politico says, "It's a big game hunt, and we're the game....The jungle'll be left to pygmies and hyenas."
Klein hails and nails Stanton/Clinton for skilful cynicism: "He was all yak-butter and horseshit," says Charlie. Fans of Primary Colours will love this book's raffish authenticity. But the canvas is vaster--the Vietnam chapter is as evocative as the American ones--the story sprawls Tom Wolfe-ishly, and Klein is not just scoring points, he's a moralist hunting big game. --Tim Appelo
