Political fiction is in. Ayn Rand’s grandiloquent “Atlas Shrugged” is receiving a long-awaited cinematic treatment, “O: A Presidential Novel” drew attention and derision in almost-equal proportions, and pundits like Glenn Beck have made their own attempts at writing political novels.
Sometimes it seems like every politico might just be a failed novelist.
A few of them, however, rise high enough or become vain enough to publish their novels. Often, they’re bracingly bad. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s “Blind Trust,” for example, prompted the Washington Post’s Steven Levingston to write, “You will not often find deep human insight in a novel written by a politician.” Newt Gingrich’s historical novels earn conflicting reviews on predictably partisan grounds, but don’t aspire to literary heights. In Rep. Peter King’s novel “A Vale of Tears,” a thinly disguised avatar of the author fights terrorism, largely through meetings.
While Barack Obama’s non-fiction received rare praise for its complexity, his years in office — years of briefing books and budgets — are unlikely to be nurturing a future novelist. Indeed, Jimmy Carter is alone among former presidents in publishing largely unremarkable fiction.
What many of these efforts lack, writes Seth Fischer in “The Rumpus,” is the crucial skill of empathy. It’s not so much that politicians lack an innate ability to identify with others, but that they repress it, consciously or unconsciously, to deal with the all too human face of their job. They can fake it, some convincingly — such as Bill Clinton, watery-eyed and quivery-lipped, feeling our pain — but fiction removes the veil.
So the flaws of political fiction are surprisingly similar. They stress plot over characterization, systematization over idiosyncrasy, and ideology over humanity. All of these weaknesses stem from the political mindset — a mindset of teams and schemes and frameworks.
The ability to feel like others feel is essential to writing good fiction. Knowing people —their motivations and weaknesses, their goals and fears — is just as essential to good public policy. So what does it say about the latter that our politicians and pundits are so bad at the former?
Some argue that empathy is undesirable in politics. Rand, for example, would argue that empathy is a false god, one that leads inexorably to emotionalism and statism and tyranny. Rand’s novels, like her politics, are austere. They are grandly idealistic; her characters posture and pose, but often fail to breathe.
But empathy, properly understood, doesn’t involve acquiescence to the every need of constituents, or the elevation of feeling over logic or necessity. Empathy is broader than that. Empathy speaks to human motivations, like greed or guilt, to human failings, like hubris or arrogance. Understanding people can bring clarity to policy, and some subtlety.
If our politicians were great writers, maybe they’d understand a little better how their stories are not unique, and how their backgrounds might affect their thinking on policy. They might understand irony, or heroism or the tragic flaw. They might see themselves as smaller, and the many worlds of humanity as something large.
Maybe they wouldn’t be better politicians. But they couldn’t be much worse.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
