Supreme Courtship

Ah, nothing like an ice storm/power outage to get some reading done, although the light gets pretty dim around 4:00. I ripped right through Christopher Buckley's Supreme Courtship. It was a light and fairly zippy read and, really, I had little else to do while curled up in a sleeping bag in a house that registered somewhere around 34 degrees.

This book reminded me of some of Tom Wolfe's books, though obviously not as long and sweeping. I enjoyed the freakishly prescient Sarah Palin similarities, though it turned out there were only two (thank goodness), right in the beginning. The unpopular president gives up on finding a Supreme Court nominee that the angry Congress will accept and gleefully offers a Court TV judge they can't refuse.

Here's where Sarah Palin comes in (sort of). When Pepper Cartwright pronounces "You Betcha!" I thought Buckley to be some sort of psychic. After all, the book was published in September). When he then mentions that there's a spike in sales of cherry red pickup trucks because of this nominee, all I could think of was the wide-spread mania over Palin's rimless glasses. But then, I suppose not all pop culture should be attributed to the former Republican VP nominee. Eventually she will go away, recede from my mind, and I'll then fail to find her lurking in everything I read. I hope.

I felt like Buckley created in President Donald Vanderdamp the sort of president he thought Bush could have been. Never mind idealogy. Vanderdamp is genial, a lover of bowling who'd rather be back home in some unpronounceable small town in Ohio (since it is unpronounceable and starts with a W, I thought of Palin's hometown. That woman is everywhere!) And instead has to run the country. You kind of want to hate him at first, but he's a good enough guy.

I liked the characters--the prickly, pesky, uber-intelligent Justices, the president, Pepper herself, the suicidal Chief Justice, the grasping, nakedly ambitious Senator, and especially Graydon Clenndennynn. Who wouldn't want a wise, Boston Brahmin type getting you out of trouble with his calm wisdom, his intelligence, and his perfect martinis served with cheese amuse-gueules?

Obviously, I didn't like Pepper's husband--the stupidly named Buddy, the TV producer who is responsible for her rise to TV fame (though almost responsible for her failure to the Supreme Court). He's not likeable, of course, but it's more that Buckley never bothers to explain how on earth those two ended up together and I didn't buy it.

Pepper's attempts to rule--or at least judge-from the highest bench in America are amusing and a little bittersweet. It all seems so much easier and more fun on Judge Judy. In general this book made me never, ever, ever want to be a lawyer (or be married to one), but it was pretty entertaining.

Nice bit of advice: "Short of nuclear warheads that have already been launched, there is no situation that cannot be met head-on with inaction."

And this image, about a dog: Dwight lifted his head off the pillow next to the President's and cocked an ear in hopes of discerning syllabic similarity between the words being spoken and "biscuit."

I rather think those two quotes go well together, now that I see them juxtaposed.