Customer Reviews

The White House Mess

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Thank You For Smoking" is still Christopher Buckley's best effort to date. But if you want to know where to go *next*, I suggest this lesser-known volume rather than "Little Green Men" or "Wry Martinis." "Mess" has a psychic feel to it - written during the days of the Reagan Administration, it could just about pass as a roman-a-clef by a Clinton cabinet member.

The White House Mess is both a hilarious political satire and an amazingly accurate portrait of the first Clinton Administration. Sure, the names have been changed but anyone who followed politics over the course of the '90s will recognize the characters. Thomas N. Tucker is a so-called "Moderate Democrat" who, after a few terms as Governor of a small Republican state (Idaho, in this case), is elected President over Republican George H.W. Bush. Tucker comes to Washington with a fiercely independent wife and a staff that is an uneasy mix of cynical insiders and idealistically niave (read: stupid) campaign aides with little actual practical experience. Over the course of the next four years, Tucker finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal, has to deal with his idiot brother, fails to establish any firm policy beyond what the polls say he should do, and -- as his Presidency comes to a close -- manages to embroil American soldiers in a futile military campaign. There it is, the Clinton Administration in a nutshell. Of course, what's truly amazing isn't that Buckley managed to write a memoir of the Clinton Presidency but that Buckley did so in 1987 -- five years before anyone outside of Arkansas even knew who Bill Clinton was and certainly before anyone expected this guy to be President. (Of course, what's really funny is that when the book first came out, many critics sniped that Buckley's satire was too outrageous and had no basis in reality.)

Unfairly or not, Clinton hangs over Buckley's satire and, what originally might have seemed as a simple farce, is now tinged with a certain bittersweet feel. You still laugh but its no longer a what-will-he-say-next laugh as much as its a laugh of I-Can't-Believe-This-Actually-Happened. By that same regard, when the book first came out, one of the funniest parts dealt with the difficulty of getting a senile Ronald Reagan to leave the Oval Office following Tucker's inaguration. As funny and well-written as this scene is, its no longer quite as funny with the knowledge that Reagan is -- in real life -- suffering from the late stages of Alzheimer's.

However, these are all minor quibbles and they shouldn't take away from what is one of the funniest, unsung political satires of the previous century. Buckley disguises his book as the political memoir of former Tucker aide Herbert Wadlough. Wadlough, a stuffy, pompous, but well-meaning Englishman, comes across as something of a poor man's Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Buckley perfectly captures the man's moralistic yet clueless voice. As well, anyone who has read any of the recent memoirs by various Reagan and Clinton administration veterans will be amused as Wadlough continually tries to overhype his importance and present himself as something other than a rather minor cog in the government. Admitedly, its probably easier to enjoy this book if you're a conservative -- most of Buckley's barbs are reserved for the less-than-worldly liberals who surround Tucker. However, Buckley is hardly a partisan when it comes to throwing his punches. The Republican Party takes it share number of shots. Buckley is truly a bipartisan ridiculer but writes with such good-natured wit and skill that its hard to imagine any sensible person (no matter what their political alignment taking offense). This is a truly hilarious book and a must read for anyone with an interest in politics or a need for a good laugh.

The book's hook is that it's a parody of White House politics, where the status of the characters' relationships among one another is given more importance than the issues that are being governed over. Written before an Arkansas governor won the real presidency, it's narrated by a sidekick of the [obviously fictional] Democratic Idaho governor that went on to inherit the White house for a term. Buckley does a wonderful job of telling the story with sublety - the narrator is too dignified to admit his own wrongdoings while burying his peers, who have also all written their own memoirs doing the same thing. True to the title, the President's term is embroiled with controversy, ranging from a missing hamster to a poor decision to gas an uprising in the Bahamas. There's a sex scandal involving interns, a first brother that causes some grief, and strain in the bedroom of the first lady. Can you believe it was written before Reagan left office?
Recommended for anyone that can laugh at Presidential politics, political critics, or the pretensions of executive staff members.

One of Buckley's earlier efforts, The White House Mess is a slight, inconsequential book, good more for chuckles than the guffaws some of the writer's later books induce. Still, I find myself pulling it off the shelf every now and then just to pass some time.
It's easy to dip in and out of Buckley's imaginary White House, a goofy place more akin to "That's My Bush!" than "The West Wing." Putting a Democratic governor of Idaho (!) in the White House after the 1988 election, Buckley leads the reader through the most inept administration in modern political history, while also casting light on the petty maneuverings of those aides clamoring to be close to the crown, however tarnished.

Another hillarious, must-read Buckley book. You'll love it. Trust me, once you read one of this guy's books, you'll be hooked. I'm just waiting for Buckley to put out a new one.

Believe it or not, I managed to make it through this much of my life having never read a word by Christopher Buckley. This book was loaned to me by a friend, and I was a little skeptical about reading a political satire after coming off the past several months of "political cartoon overload."

The belly laughing had begun by paragraph 5 of the prologue, and I was unable to put this book down. I read the entire book in two sittings, and I have to say that I haven't laughed so hard or so well in a long, long time.

I was genuinely concerned that the book would be just another politics-driven piece of thinly disguised propoganda for one "side" or the other, but it was, instead, a refreshing and silly poke at government in general. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this book is a good poke at <i>people</i> in general.

I loved every page of <u>The White House Mess,</u> and I recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone looking for a good chuckle.

This book is still funny, although it is greatly overshadowed by Buckley's later books, Little Green Men and Thank You for Smoking, which are two of the most outlandishly hilarious novels ever written. As a memoir of an ill-fated, disaster-prone, fictional administration, it has its moments, and if you have read the two more recent books, I can still recommend this one, although it won't give you the belly laughs that Thank You for Smoking and Little Green Men did. If you've already read those two and are looking for something else by the same author, this one is still worthwhile.

Having savored, and highly recommended Buckley's "Thank You for Smoking", "Little Green Men", and "Wry Martinis" I was severely disappointed by this book. Frankly, I find it astonishing that this has the same author. It does, however, sound like a comic novel which would have produced by George H. Bush's speechwriter. After reading it I now understand why Washington insiders George Will and Bob Woodward praised it as uproarious.

This is an entirely safe book; you could recommend it to an elderly spinster aunt, or a conservative clergyman without any fear of offense. It is tame middlebrow humor reminiscent of the "daily chuckle" one might find in a small town paper. I found it hard to believe that it was written in the '80's by a man who was still in his thirties; it reminds me of the type of satire Art Buchwald wrote in the '60's. The average television sitcom has more wit and punch and is far more riske.

This involves a parody of a presidency in no way reminiscent of others beset by one tame crises after another. It is totally devoid of the rapier wit, irony, and irreverance one finds in Buckley's later works. The book takes no risks and no group could be bruised. As I struggled to get through it I never cracked a smile.

This book will be funny to anyone, but readers unfortunate enough to have read any memoirs of the "from the corridors of power" genre will be convulsed. Buckley writes from the perspective of a high-ranking aide to Reagan's fictional successor, President Tucker, jotting down a diary as self-important as his real-life counterparts (one subplot turns around the writer's attempt to keep his parking spot, which seems to be of equal importance as the rest of the nation's business put together).

Buckley is not just amusing, but often insightful. While the events of the book are absurd, the characters are often all too realistic. A must-read for Buckley fans, and highly recommended for anyone else.

Like the tobacco industry and the conspiracy obsessed alien abduction movement, Christopher Buckley has always picked targets that deserve ridicule for their pompous self-absorption and their lack of contact with reality. Those self-serving political memoirs that politicians write after leaving office or their jobs were a natural target for Buckley's poisoned pen. The White House Mess is a letter perfect parody of the fictional Thomas N. Tucker administration from the perspective of his Assistant, Herbert Wadlough.

Anyone who reads memoirs will recognize the usual things- the vivid remembrances of petty turf battles, self-serving recollections of conversations where they believe their input was the decisive factor, etc. Buckley tosses in a hilarious series of crisis for the Tucker Administration to wallow over, and equally inept administration officials to mock. The scary thing is that the Tucker Administration bears a striking resemblance to the first year of the Clinton Administration. Oddly prescient for a book written in 1986.

Fans of Christopher Buckley will not be disappointed.