Black president no longer a novel idea

In the 1960s, Irving Wallace wrote a novel called “The Man,” in which the sudden deaths of the president, vice president and speaker of the House bring to power a most unlikely occupant of the Oval Office: Sen. Douglas Dillman -- a black man.

Thanks to the election of Barack Obama, a black president in Washington fiction will be no more exceptional than one in real life.

“Before Obama, you wouldn’t have gotten away with simply having a black president and having that on the periphery. Now you can, and what a great thing that is,” says David Baldacci, the brand-name author of such Washington thrillers as “Absolute Power” and “Divine Justice.”

“Invariably, Washington takes its cue from whomever is in power and so will Washington novelists,” says Christopher Buckley, author of such D.C. satires as “Thank You for Smoking” and “No Way to Treat a First Lady.”

The “Washington novel,” an enduring genre that includes such classics as Henry Adams’ “Democracy” and Allen Drury’s “Advise and Consent,” has inevitably changed, but in the next few years it may change profoundly. Authors cite not just Obama’s ethnicity, but his youth and his bearing.

“He’s charismatic, with a young family, and he’s multiracial, and I think for all of those reasons it would be very hard to accept the sort of traditional, white Donald Rumsfeldian authority figure you see in a lot of presidential fiction,” says Richard North Patterson, author of such political bestsellers as “Protect and Defend” and “Private Screening.”

“When Kennedy was president, even if people were trying to portray a conservative president, there would be some aspect of youth, charisma, a new spirit. Obama is going to be at least as strong a figure; there’s no way of getting around it.”

Ward Just, whose novels include “The American Ambassador,” looks forward to more stories about members of Washington’s black middle class and to a more serious approach to government.