“(Senator Barbara Boxer’s novel) “A Time to Run” is basically three plots, loosely related, stuck together with champagne and fornication.”

- from a review by David Von Drehle, Staff Writer at The Washington Post

Ever wonder why Barbara Boxer seems to really hate Republicans? Von Drehle’s glimpse inside her new book reveals that they have Stepford wives, neo-Nazi relatives, and like red meat. That’s on top of our earlier report that the principal Republican character had an abusive father and enjoyed beer, football, and hunting. In other words, the polar opposite of Boxer’s life-partnered, far-left, vegan wine-sipping Marin County partisans.

There are a million potential stories in DC — politics is conflict, after all — but Boxer takes both the easy and low road:

This plot follows the classic Harlequin romance template: one woman, two men — a brooding brunet and a broad-chested blond. The two men, Joshua Fischer and Greg Hunt, are best friends and college roommates, and both love young Ellen Downey. But which one will she choose? The one doomed to an early death? Or the one with a Terrible Secret?

… the Terrible Secret is pure Boxer: Emotionally wounded, physically majestic, reliably priapic Greg cannot bear to tell Josh and Ellen that he’s . . . a Republican.

Unfortunately, Boxer and Hayes are so flummoxed by this development that their story falls to pieces. Try as they might, they can’t plausibly imagine how a nice boy like Greg could turn out so badly. The book becomes an increasingly outlandish series of temptations and debasements through which Greg passes on his way from college pal to GOP henchman. First they make Greg a budding journalist, which wipes away any lingering virtue. Then they assign him a rich, empty-headed wife, a Nazi-fancying father-in-law, and a billionaire mentor so rapacious that he keeps entire sides of beef in his house in case he wants a steak.

Changing a human being into a conservative takes so long that the book runs out of time, and ends in a flurry of half-tied loose ends.

Von Drehle bemoans the book’s shallowness:

… the fictional senator and her creator have shared an experience new to this period in history: the mainstreaming of women into American politics. How that worked, what it felt like, how it changed the institutions and the men and women involved, could have been fodder for a swell book, if told honestly and briskly, with wit and feeling.

What’s left unsaid is that the lightweight PR hound that is the junior Senator from California is not and can never be the person to write that book. The one she did write reveals her capabilities exactly.

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Our other coverage of “A Time To Run:”
Barbara Boxer: Conservatives Not Raised In Loving Families
Early Critique of New Barbara Boxer Novel: She Should Stick To Annoying PR Stunts
Barbara Boxer: No Newt Gingrich

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 11:57 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Barbara Boxer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.