BOOK REVIEW : A Blount View of Our First ‘First Hubby’

Is America ready for a pregnant President? Nineteen ninety-three, the year in which Blount sets his fragile comic novel, is a mere 30 months away. The male incumbent has been killed by a falling fish--a fluke if ever there was one, though it doesn’t take a tuna dropping on your head to kill you. Even a sardine, descending from a sufficient height at the proper angle, could probably prove fatal. In any case, Clementine Fox, the vice president, is sworn in while on a good-will trip to China, an event that elevates her adoring husband to the anomalous status of First Hubby.

Having no interest in redecorating the White House or buying new china, and discovering that all his cherished causes have been preempted, Fox is a man without a mission. To occupy his time constructively, he decides to write a memoir of life with Clementine; he resolves to keep the tone rollicking, the mood relentlessly upbeat, and the incidents non-controversial. Before his inadvertent ascent to First Hubbyhood, Guy had been a humor columnist, and he is determined not to let his natural style slip into solemnity because of his position. As any writer knows, awe plays havoc with prose, so Guy emphasizes the lighter side of life with the leader of the Free World. Happily, there’s enough breeze to keep his project in motion, even without a port in sight.

The problem is twofold. Highly visible, Guy cannot risk any overt value judgments. The last thing he needs or wants is to be excoriated by the media for spending too much on designer suits (or worse, not actually spending anything), for feuding with his wife’s cabinet or for snubbing visiting First Ladies. He’s already roused some resentment by joking with his staff, suggesting alternative refreshments at White House teas, and sedulously avoiding interviews. Though one of the perks of his non-job is a personal hairdresser, he uses her talents only for disguises that enable him to circulate freely in public places--disguises that only partly serve his purpose but do bolster the frail story.

In the course of the musings that form this book, Guy wonders how a First Hubby would manage an extramarital affair. He wouldn’t dream of betraying his beloved Clementine, but still, the idea that he couldn’t chance even a romantic lunch without creating an international incident is unsettling. Though publishers would be ecstatic if his journal were scandalously revealing, Guy is determined to keep a low profile and not say anything that would imperil Clementine’s political future. He does, however, make an exception for the curious nature of their original encounter, when Clementine was a student at a Fundamentalist college and Guy was a cub reporter. Apparently Clementine was being menaced by a pack of fierce dogs, and in a desperate attempt to distract them she had removed all her clothes except for a string of heirloom pearls. Guy, never a combative person, was covering a protest demonstration from behind a tree when the future 43rd President ran straight into his arms. How’s that for a cute meet?

Anyway, it’s love at first total sight, and in lieu of violating the sanctity of the presidential boudoir, Guy offers a sweetly winsome account of the years leading up to the near future, introducing the First Couple’s two delightful children, presenting a rich sampling of their friends and relations, and inventing some fanciful political crises to remind us that this isn’t just any romance but the story of the President and her consort. Precarious as this premise is, it has a certain insouciant allure. Wouldn’t it be fun to have an in-house wit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I like the idea, though I don’t see what’s so inherently hilarious, or even disconcerting, about a pregnant President. Queen Victoria was more or less continuously in that condition for much of her reign, and the sun never set on the British Empire until much later.

FIRST HUBBY

by Roy Blount Jr. Villard Books

$18.95, 291 pages

Next: Carolyn See reviews Marilyn Bowering’s “To All Appearances a Lady.”