Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Political insider dishes D.C. dirt Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 15:45:13 EST Message-ID: \SE D;LIFE;THE READ \HD Political insider dishes D.C. dirt \BY Elisabeth Hickey \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES "Donovan's Wife" is a nice bathtub/beach resort read for the true political junkie, that hardy breed who can't get enough of back-room machinations, attack ads, smear campaigns, dirty tricks and conniving handlers from just reading the newspaper or watching a Ross Perot press conference. "This Week with David Brinkley" regular Tom Wicker ("The Kingpin"), recently retired after 30 years as a political columnist for the New York Times, gives a true insider's account of the workings of a hotly contested Senate campaign. Mr. Wicker has written a well-informed, often witty but ultimately rather pedantic Washington potboiler. With the election just before us, it's a timely read. But for those for whom politics is not an all-consuming passion, the book proves tough to get through. All the requisites of the standard Love Inside the Beltway novel are here - power, lust, greed and sex - but in deadly dull proportions. The power-hungry candidate, trying to seduce his estranged wife, whispers in her ear: "Winning turns me on." Please. The novel's hero, famous newspaper columnist (and womanizer) Milo Speed, enjoys the ear of top politicians but secretly rues his empty life. His lukewarm marriage has just dissolved. His one moment of happiness, an affair he had with Josie Donovan, wife of a two-bit congressman, is years in the past. In one of the book's more laughable lines, Milo is described as "a scarred veteran of suppression, never to be redeemed by confession." As the novel opens, Rep. Victor T. Donovan has caught the eye of his party's bigwigs by exposing a well-known businessman who made his fortune in pornography. It is decided that Donovan will challenge entrenched Sen. O. Mack Bender. All of which gives Mr. Wicker, through his alter ego Milo Speed, the chance to lament the state of modern-day politics: ". . . the race, [Milo] thought sadly, was supposed to be between Victor T. Donovan and O. Mack Bender, a campaign between flesh-and-blood candidates, about voters' concerns. Instead, the work of [political consultants] would make it a contest between the sharpest slogans, the cleverest sound bites, the most persuasive television images - and, worse, the slickest deceptions. It would be a campaign about winning - nothing else." Although he harbors a secret longing for Josie, for most of the book Milo is having an affair with the congressman's nubile assistant, Lacy Farnes, which gives Mr. Wicker a chance to indulge his annoying obsession with the female anatomy. Every woman in the book is accompanied by a description of her chest. Mr. Wicker also has apparently caught an early beat on the family values theme that pervaded the 1992 campaign. Josie, sick of her husband's political hardball, abandons the campaign and takes up again with Milo. The opposition gets wind of the affair. To save his political fortunes, Donovan announces in a television appearance that he is separating from his wife so as to uphold for the voters those "family values, those moral beliefs, that you and I know are the bedrock upon which our beloved state and nation were built." Elisabeth Hickey is a reporter for the Life section. ***** DONOVAN'S WIFE By Tom Wicker Morrow, $22, 336 pages This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM