Schemers are at work in political parable

“At times Washington seemed not so much a city as a bunch of stage sets where strangers acted out their brief, curious parts,” Jeffrey Frank writes in his sardonic novel of Beltway power plays and political machinations, a world in which attention of just about any sort is coveted by the players but can have disastrous consequences. “Bad Publicity,” Frank’s second satiric novel set in our nation’s capital (after “The Columnist”), builds tension with a mosaic of characters, all of whom are double-crossing has-beens teetering on the brink of failure. The book is set in 1987, as Gov. Michael Dukakis is making his bid for the presidency. Democrats in town are positioning themselves for appointments and prestige as one of “Mike’s people,” while Republicans and nonpartisan folk continue to wrangle and scheme in their respective arenas. Frank’s quasi-nefarious characters aren’t wiretapping or knocking off their enemies to get ahead; rather, they use petty, stupid tactics to undo one another and themselves. And this seems to be the book’s point: that petty, stupid tactics work.

Charles Dingleman, the central character, is a three-term congressman who lost his seat a few years earlier and is hoping to regain some political clout. “The truth was that the people of Pennsylvania had turned on Charlie,” Frank writes, “and they had their reasons: a public divorce, which not only left him feeling sorry at the way everything had turned out but ashamed of himself. ‘I just kept stepping into it,’ he liked to say, but then he somehow did it again.”

Charlie now works for a Washington law firm, where he does little more than pine for a White House appointment he knows will be coming soon. He’s inept in social situations -- especially with women -- and lacks self-awareness. Having lunch with Judith Grust, an associate from his firm who is hyper-aware of possible sexual misconduct, Charlie makes the mistake of telling her how much he likes women. Trying to turn his admission into a joke, he bungles the punch line: “[I]f I were a mangy dog and you were roast beef, I wouldn’t care.” Certain she has been the victim of some vague kind of sexual harassment, Grust reports Dingleman to the firm’s managing partner, who, in order to quiet her complaint, concocts a story that Dingleman is receiving psychiatric help for an undisclosed problem.

Vengeful and crafty, Grust befriends Hank Morriday, a hapless fellow at a Democratic think tank, after he boasts of knowing the local television news anchor. Morriday is a name-dropper who will do anything to be admired, and Grust preys on this weakness; she persuades him to call the anchor’s office and leak the Dingleman story, thus effectively blocking Dingleman’s potential White House appointment.

The ensemble of characters, all of whom know one another, or will by the book’s conclusion, expands as the white lie about Dingleman gains credence and the author’s premise -- that everyone uses everyone else -- is cemented into the book’s structure. We meet Candy Romulade, a high-strung publicist assigned to Dingleman when he takes his problem to Big Tooth, a hot-shot Washington public relations firm, and Candy’s assistant, Teresa, who enters into an eccentric affair with the news anchor.

Frank’s writing is wry and incisive; none of the characters escapes his scathing assessment. Each one is a schemer whose instincts (self-protection, self-aggrandizement) militate against genuine career progress and (perhaps more to the point) personal happiness. Grust, for one, having used Morriday to defame Dingleman over supposed sexual harassment, tolerates the attentions of an elderly partner in her law firm. He is simply a way for her to better her chances at early partnership. In meeting his sexual needs, she rationalizes, she is expending “fewer calories on him than she would merely climbing onto her exercise machine.” Yet she still thinks that in trashing Dingleman she has saved the country from the ascent of a sexual predator.

Frank’s characters exploit one another, sleep passionlessly with one another, fantasize about liaisons with one another and come to realize that the brass ring is passing them by. Though certain they’re destined for fame and fortune, they watch as their second and third chances ebb away. This is what it’s like to become a nobody in a world of somebodies, the novel tells us. This is what it’s like to be washed out. Though the human weaknesses Frank limns apply just as often to those of us outside D.C., “Bad Publicity” will make us happy, especially as this election year gains steam, to be living elsewhere.