FICTION

SHORT LIST by Jim Lehrer (Putnam: $19.95; 200 pp.) Once upon a time there was a severely underqualified politician who suddenly found himself his party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States. Are you laughing yet? George Bush’s temporary lack of intestinal fortitude may have struck terror in many voters’ hearts, but in “Short List,” author Jim Lehrer, co-anchor of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, gives us a fictionalized excuse to laugh all our troubles away. His hapless near-nominee is one-eyed Mack, the lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, the Second Man of the state, whose $9,000 annual pay is nicely complemented by the more substantial earnings of his wife, who invented the drive-through grocery chain called JackieMarts. Mack’s boss, Governor Buffalo Joe Hayman, is moments away from delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention when he is felled by just enough of a stroke to take his voice away. “Mack give speech,” he scribbles, and the rest is almost history. Lehrer is convincing enough about the back-room political process to terrify anyone who still believes that the best man can, or does, win; no matter how honest Mack is about his rather severe shortcomings, everyone he talks to finds something to like about his lack of expertise. He may be uninformed, but at least he doesn’t lie about it. Lehrer’s comedy doesn’t always live up to the possibilities of the situation, but this is a nice, safe, vicarious thrill for anyone who despairs of finding a set of candidates whom he can unequivocally adore.