Taft 2012 by Jason Heller
Quirk, $14.95, 256p, tp, 9781594745508. Fiction—Political.
How would our world be different if William Howard Taft had disappeared, without a trace, moments before Woodrow Wilson was sworn in as President in 1913? Not very, according to author Jason Heller and his new political fable, Taft 2012. Sure, the big man’s reputation would suffer through not having his tenure on the Supreme Court, and (at least according to Heller), so would Orson Welles, who made the failure Citizen Taft instead of the film we remember, Citizen Kane.
Beyond that, the novel opens in late 2011, in a world quite recognizable to us. On that rainy night, a Secret Service agent shoots an intruder on the White House lawn, only to discover he’s just pumped a bullet into the 27th President. Precisely how Taft falls through a hole in time and almost 99 years is unexplained, and inexplicable, and not really the point of the book.
Taft has been long-gone, but not completely forgotten. His reputation is mostly that of a forgotten, failed President, other than the legacy of his disappearance. And his family has labored under that cloud, although his great-granddaughter does have a seat in the House of Representatives. Like her ancestor, she’s a bit of an independent, more interested in doing good than being a political star.
Plunked into the modern world, the former President retains his appetites for good food, good living, and the good of the people, and after acclimating to his new time and place, he becomes something of a media darling. He also becomes a rallying point in a country suffering the latest Presidential election, in which the people feel disconnected and ignored.
Welcome to the cult of personality. A grass-roots political movement forms around first the image, then the idea, and finally the actual person of William Howard Taft. He’d only served one term as President in the early 1900s, so he’s still eligible to run for another term in the early 2000s, and in short order, he warms to the idea. But how will a politician, whose instincts and skills pre-date both television and radio, fare in the every-minute, always-on political realm of today? Well, according to Heller, pretty darn well. Especially if he can truly connect with the people, rather than viewing them as simply a means to the end of election.
And we’re off and running.
Along the way, the original progressive trust-buster will find that back-rooms and nastiness, too, have evolved into something stronger and more malignant. But there may still be room for idealism and true caring in the modern world.
It’s nice to read Presidential fiction focusing on one of the lesser knowns (or at least, one of the Presidents who appears less often). And Heller shows that he knows who he’s writing about. I enjoyed the book as fiction, and as political commentary.
Heller wrote Taft 2012 to comment on politics today, as well as several other social causes facing us all. And, though he wrote it before the onset of the Occupy movement, I can see echoes of that in this book, too. I think he’s caught the proper political mind set here, and if his characters are a little idealized, well, that’s why we read fiction: to imagine ourselves greater than we are.