Night of Camp David

Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, a journalist turned novelist. The book was written in 1965, the same year that the 25^th amendment was ratified. It has to do with the succession of the presidency should he/she become incapacitated. That would be a simpler thing if the issue was one of physical health, like a stroke or a heart attack, but it becomes more complex if the issue is one of mental health. I think I first heard about this novel on a podcast from Steve Schmidt and Elise Jordan called “Words Matter.” The podcast is excellent. Given the current administration, use of the 25^th amendment has come into the conversation even though it is so unlikely that there could be enough agreement from the cabinet to proceed with if the president is not cooperative.

At any rate, it’s a good story. It took about a third of the book to really set the stage and introduce the characters. The last two-thirds were a very good read. The president, Mark Hollenbach, was paranoid, and his vice-president had already been caught in some shady problems resulting in declaring that he would not run for office in President Hollenbach’s second term. One of the characters said, “Nobody – but nobody – in this country can tell a president of the United States that his mind is sick.” Meanwhile, the president had scheduled a nuclear arms talk with Russia, and the thought of letting an unpredictable paranoid person do that. Curiously, the author named one Supreme Court Justice Grady Cavanaugh.

It was the Secretary of Defense Sidney Karper who told the protagonist, a senator named James MacVeagh, “Jim,” he said, “this whole affair has convinced me of one thing. The mental business is almost impossible to handle at the apex of government. We thought he disability problem was solved with the succession amendment was passed and ratified in the Johnson administration. But it isn’t, is it? If Mark comes back and claims he’s normal, be we have evidence he isn’t, then the fight would rip the government apart – with God knows what dangerous results abroad.”

Remember this is a 1965 book, not a current political intrigue.