Is American political fiction really so bad?

Via Kevin Drum, I see that Christopher Lehman has a long essay in the Washington Monthly asserting the poverty of American political fiction:

To gauge the arrested development of American political novels, one need look no further than the pallid state of our own literary satire. Christopher Buckley now passes for the high-water mark of political satire in the nation’s literature. In 1994, Buckley drew upon his experience as a speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush to produce Thank You for Smoking, an engaging send-up of the grimly farcical rounds of advocacy for the tobacco industry, as well as of the excesses of its opponents. Since then, however, Buckley’s novels have acquired a one-note tetchiness in both tone and subject. They read less like gimlet-eyed parody than gussied-up “O’Reilly Factor” transcripts…. [F]or all the impact of novels of advocacy, we have consistently failed Whitman’s prophecy in one crucial respect. America has almost never produced a serious novel addressing the workings of national politics as its main subject. Indeed, it’s hard not to read Whitman’s own rueful characterization of his own literary generation?a ?parcel of dandies and ennuy?es? usually just ?whimpering and crying about something, chasing one aborted conceit after another, and forever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women??and not remember many of the scribes churning out the modern American political novel. The genre is as distressingly flat and uninvolving as it was when ?Democratic Vistas? was published.

Well, surely those who have seen the belly of the beast — politicians themselves — could produce a good political novel. Oh, wait… [Well, what about political scientists?–ed. Don’t go there.] This particular subgenre of fiction is the topic of Rachel Donadio’s NYT Book Review essay for today. Curiously, Christopher Buckley makes a cameo appearance there as well:

Novels by politicians are generally regarded as vanity projects or curiosities, written out of egomania, boredom or a drive to “get out the message.” Often culled by reporters looking to leaven political profiles, most have fairly tepid sales before being quickly forgotten…. For the most part, novels by politicians quickly fade from the conversation – and the bookshelf. Christopher Buckley, the novelist and Washington gadabout, recalled how he unloaded a lot of books in a house move. Years later, he ran into William S. Cohen, an acquaintance and the author of several novels of international intrigue, some written in the 80’s with former Senator Gary Hart. Cohen, who was then President Clinton’s first secretary of defense, invited him to lunch. “I went to the Pentagon for lunch in his office, which is a very formidable office, and he greeted me at the door and handed me a piece of paper,” Buckley recounted. It was a printout from the online bookseller Alibris, with the listing for one of Cohen’s books. “It said, ‘Very fine first edition, excellent condition, inscribed to a fellow author, Christopher Buckley.’ The price listed was $3,500. I said, ‘Well, Bill, this is most embarrassing.’ ” Besides, Buckley added, “I thought it likely there had been a decimal error in the price.”

Is the state of American political fiction really so parlous perilous? At first I was skeptical, but after perusing my bookshelf, maybe Lehman has a point. He missed a few greats in his conversation. I liked Buckley’s Little Green Men better than Lehman, in part because the premise is so delightfully loopy. I’d also include Tom Perrotta’s Election and Ward Just’s Echo House. Lehman’s biggest oversight is Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods, but that might be because this small masterpiece is as much about Vietnam as it is about what it means to be a politician. Still, that’s not such a big list. What’s the explanation? Lehman thinks it’s because the overarching theme in American political fiction is the loss of innocence — which doesn’t jibe with how politics actually works:

The American political system has never really staked anything on the preservation of innocence. Indeed, its structural genius is very much the reverse?using the self-interested agendas of political players to cancel each other out, interlacing the powers of government in order to limit the damage that one branch can do, and making ambition at least address, if not fulfill, the public good in spite of itself. Our federal government, as any good reader of ?Federalist 10? can report, is an instrument of cynicism erected on the open acknowledgment that human nature is flawed. It has unfailingly survived (and thrived) despite the vices novelists suggest have brought it to its knees. Expecting anyone to journey to the seat of national power and deliver a Mr. Smith-like blow for the sanctity of scouting and motherhood is a bit like wanting the final act of a musical to be all gun battles and explosions: It’s what the critics call a genre error. What’s more, this stubborn moralizing impulse is what makes American political fiction, even today, such watery and unsatisfying literature: It deprives writers of the best material. Don’t the intrigues sprouting from our well-known human flaws and excesses ultimately make for more engaging plots and character studies than the falls from grace of a thousand or so Washington ing?nus?

This echoes the complaint voiced by Slate’s David Edelstein a few years ago about how politics is portrayed in film and television:

The real party line in campaign movies turns out to lead straight to the Big Speech (let’s call it the BS)?the one in which the candidate either bravely affirms principles over politics and is transfigured, or cravenly yields to expediency and is damned. Compromise, the core of the political process, is regarded not as an art but as a black art. The transfiguring BS happens like this: The crowd is primed to cheer. The candidate (a man, generally) begins a speech that has been worked on by his handlers, the one designed to please the fat cats and ward heelers?i.e., the “special interests.” But at the last second, he cannot bring himself to read what’s in front of him. He eyeballs the eager crowd, then lays aside that accursed speech and begins to extemporize. I have met the devil, he says, and nearly sold my soul to get elected. This country, he goes on, deserves better. The people deserve better. The candidate’s spouse, who has only recently discovered that he wasn’t the Superman of integrity she thought she’d married, regards him again with Lois Lane eyes. The crowd goes wild: Balloons and confetti and soaring music signal the politician’s apotheosis.

I’m not sure I have a better answer than Lehman or Edelstein, except to say that I’m not at all sure the problem is peculiarly American. Good fiction set in an democratic political milieu just might be a difficult feat to execute. Readers are warmly encouraged to suggest their favorite political novels.