You can just imagine him running kisses up Palin’s arm. He’s bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by her. In the Freleng-Jones parallel world, the Palin choice has turned her running mate from a grumpy, gun-toting Elmer Fudd into a grinning, almost amorous Pepé Le Pew. Freleng and Jones were the two great guiding forces behind Looney Tunes, and therefore knew a thing or two about the human condition. In a situation like this, I find it useful to turn to the Friz Freleng–Chuck Jones Doctrine of behavioral sciences. Like Buckley’s heroine, Palin is a looker and a talker, and she’s just as thin on the résumé. Just days before Supreme Courtship hit the bookstores, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, having had his first two candidates for running mate pooh-poohed by the right wing of his party, decided in a fit of pique to settle on an all but unknown he had just met: Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Ah, but he underestimated America in 2008. Buckley planted his plot on the other side of possibility and no doubt figured he was safe there. Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible-and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist’s task becomes ever more difficult. She’s thin on the résumé and void in the experience category. So, in a fit of pique, he bypasses the more obvious, worthy candidates for the bench and nominates a cute judge he’s seen on a TV courtroom show. He’s sick of his job and wants out at the next election. His two candidates for an opening on the Supreme Court have been shown the door by the Senate Judiciary Committee. In Supreme Courtship, Christopher Buckley’s crisp, knowing, recently published Washington satire, Donald Vanderdamp is a frustrated first-term president.
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